Child of Time (64 page)

“At this range they can force their way into our warp
frame. Surely you have a plan for that?” Kendra’s question went
unanswered as a spike in the energy readings validated her concern.
Already a drakken vessel was merging warp frames. Alec managed to
delay the inevitable by randomizing the warp drive power output and
frequencies. Knowing that a malevolent ship in the same warp frame
could cause deadly fluctuations in the subspace stability, the
Avenger dropped into normal space. A moment later several dozen
drakken warp frames opened around the ship.

“You can’t hope to last in a fight all by yourself
against numbers like those only a jump away.” Theo was irritated by
what he considered a major oversight by his son.

“I don’t have to. All I have to do is make them think
the impossible.” Kiyan’s enigmatic response did little to make Theo
relax. Instead he put himself to work doing what Kiyan termed
“distracting”. It involved firing at every ship within range with
every ordinance that the Avenger carried. In a minute about half a
dozen warp frames opened up and the Avenger was pulled into one of
them. The familiar jolts followed as the drakken reentered
warp.

“What did that avail us?” Kendra could sense a larger
plan in the peripheral of her mind.

“The great chase.” Kiyan was too busy to
elaborate.

“I understand the appeal but it is unsound logic.”
Theo sounded frustrated. He would have tried some different
subspace evasion methods like broadcasting subspace white noise in
an attempt to disguise his trail or trying to generate warp
shadows. A grid representing normal space appeared in front of
them. Overtop of this grid was seen a blue dot that represented the
Avenger’s relative to normal space. Several red dots could be seen
that presumably represented drakken warp frames.

“What the...? How did you manage that?” What had
caught Theo’s attention were the five smaller blue dots that were
traveling in different directions from the Avenger. Each of the
smaller blue dots had a following of red dots. Three of the smaller
dots disappeared. Two of them reappeared a moment later and split
into two more dots each. The third dot never reappeared. Kiyan
dropped the Avenger out of warp and was immediately surrounded by
what appeared to still be a goodly amount of drakken ships. Again
they repeated the distraction routine and returned to warp
surrounded by several new dots.

“How did you manage to make them think a fighter was
the same as a battleship? They should have been able tell that the
warp frame was different without wasting any ships following it.”
Theo watched the elaborate branching patterns left on the grid by
the dots every time they divided. The red dots divided their
numbers every time a new blue dot appeared on the grid. Soon a
swarm of dots and branching lines filled the grid. The Avenger
dropped out of warp a few more times adding to the number of blue
dots on the screen.

“I added artificial mass generators to my warp
capable fighter compliment. It wasn’t difficult to update my
existing fighter wings. All I had to do was to adjust the warp
generator parameters to simulate a larger warp frame critical mass
target.” Kiyan interrupted his explanation to drop out of warp.
Seeing that no drakken immediately dropped out with him, Kiyan
released a final wave of fighters and cloaked. The drakken caught
up just in time to follow the fighters back into warp.

“The pattern is perfectly symmetrical in dispersion.
I released the largest wave of fighters first and then progressed
with increasingly smaller numbers. The pattern will continue to
disperse over several more light year sectors without the Avenger.
If the drakken manage to predict the pattern they will only find
fighters with battleship mass signatures. After reaching the full
disbursement pattern the fighters will remain in warp until either
their energy reserves give out or the drakken manage to track them
down and destabilize their warp frames. Either way will require
massive amounts resources scattered over a wide area.” Kiyan
remained under cloak but was relieved to note that there were no
drakken remaining within sensor range.

“Genius. The drakken will lose every ship they use to
destabilize the warp frames resulting untold ships wasted.” There
was admiration in Theo’s voice.

“Also Alec is convinced that this ruse will make the
AI think that there was never a battleship in their universe in the
first place.” Kiyan began to dread what he knew was coming next but
did not have much time to wait for it.

“From what you have told us, this universe is
entirely made up of mechanical drakken. Don’t get me wrong but your
attacks will not amount to much against numbers like that. Why
exactly did you come here if getting stranded in a hostile universe
was not your plan?” Kendra cut directly to the heart of the
matter.

“I find it hard to believe that your crew willingly
allowed themselves to be transferred off your ship in preparation
of a fiasco like this.” Theo spoke up before Kiyan had a chance to
answer Kendra.

“I believe that the dark lords are still organic and
oversee the mechanical drakken in production. Due to the dark
energy around them I have never been able to detect their life
signs very well. I want to close the portal from the dark universe
before the dark one had a chance to start a war. As for my crew,
they didn’t know what I had planned.” Kiyan sensed Alec’s annoyance
over something.

“About that. There is a small black lizard hiding in
a plant in the atmospheric processing facility.” Alec brought the
image up in front of them. It was as Alec had said. A small black
winged lizard only a couple centimeters long was curled up inside
the hollow stem of a guerrero stalk.

“Ray!” Kiyan scowled. “I thought you sent him to
Theo’s ship with Terra. Alec, Why is he here?”

“How should I know? He was in the simulator when I
transported him and..... Oh. He transported to the simulator from
the atmospheric deck. He must have been running a program with
himself designed into and faked the transport. I do not understand
how you organics are so adept at deceiving others.” Alec was
positively fuming over having been tricked.

“I suspect he inferred your plan somehow through his
connection with you.” Theo was trying to withhold his laughter at
Alec’s behavior.

“Ray’s specialty is martial arts and security not
programming. Someone else had to have helped him pull off something
like that.” Kiyan was still scowling.

Alec made himself busy running analyses based off of
Kiyan’s observation. “It had to be Luke. With his connection with
you, he would have to at least be equally as deceptive as you
are.”

“Ha, you are forgetting that my deceptions have been
falling apart rather quickly of late. First my parent figured it
out and now we have Ray.” Kiyan responded to Alec’s accusation.
It is possible but if he was willing to do it for Ray...

“I haven’t forgotten anything since the time my data
was transferred to this mainframe. I am already running a high
level scan for any life signs across the entire ship for others.”
Alec was showing the results.

“Now in all fairness, you have just managed to
deceive an entire drakken armada and it was only because of Baric
that we figured it out in time. You also managed to get the rest of
the crew off the ship.” Kendra cast a rueful eye at Theo who
apparently thought the entire situation to be rather comical.

“There are no life signs other than ourselves and Ray
on the entire ship.” Alec displayed the data before the trio.

Theo recovered himself enough to be helpful. “A
couple of them are elementals and Addy is a dryad. Try searching
for anything that might be unusual. Also individuals in cryo stasis
don’t have life signs. I know of some people that have tried that
trick before.”

“The water throughout the ship is uniform PH balance.
The deuterium oxide water is normal accept for some weight variance
in backup reactor number seventeen.” Alec paused and scowled.

“Heavy water is isotopic so it has different weights
normally.” Kendra offered a little advice.

“That I am aware of. However it is not natural for
the atomic weight to be uniform in an approximately humanoid
shape.” Alec brought up a three dimensional image of a roughly
humanoid liquid shape. Also there is a drop ship in one of the
hangers that is docked but disconnected from the mainframe and
shielded from scanners. Alec shook his virtual head. “There is a
cooking fire in the commissary that is not using enough fuel to
account for its BTU output.”

“Terra.” Kiyan scowled even harder.

“We have not confirmed her presence however it is
entirely likely given what we know.” Alec appeared to have accepted
the fact that he was a hopeless liar.

“Oh I’m sure she is here. In fact I think she
orchestrated the entire thing. She is the only one that could have
orchestrated something this elaborate without you overhearing
anything. If she managed to collaborate with Sapphire then she
could have convinced Luke to help. Isn’t that right Luke?”

For the first time Luke spoke up. “I really think you
are taking this the wrong way. You should be thankful that you have
such a loyal crew. It isn’t every crew that will sail into an alien
universe with their captain willingly.”

“So you hid everyone I was trying to protect on my
ship?” Kiyan was exasperated with Luke’s lack of denial.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t cancel the Thoran
diplomatic conference and so of course Savos had to go. Kronos
volunteered for an escort mission before we left so I didn’t have
to worry about him.” Luke's attempt at innocence failed
miserably.

“Just a minute, let me confirm that.” Alec’s comment
made Kiyan throw his hands up in the air. “Kronos’ drop ship went
into subspace but that doesn’t mean he didn’t come back out again
under cloak.”

“Where might a drop ship have been hidden that I can
escape your scans?” Theo inquired.

“I would have detected the vessel even under cloak
until we were entering the portal. After that point if he had
managed to dock near the drive section his cloak might have hidden
him.” Alec began running intense scans across the exterior of the
ship. In a moment the ghostly outlines of the drop ship in question
were visible against the neutronium plates.

“Look on the bright side. At least you won’t be
alone.”

------

“So now that almost my entire crew is here.” Kiyan
directed a glare towards Luke’s hologram. “We only have one option
available to us. To move forward with the plan.”

“It wasn’t entirely Luke’s fault. We made him do it
so if you must be angry with someone then be angry with me.” Terra
sounded annoyed.

“That defeats the purpose.” Kiyan was content to
continue brooding.

“And how is that?” Terra wasn’t about to let Kiyan
play that game.

“I can never stay mad at you for any length of time.
Besides how did you know what I was planning?” Kiyan already felt
his bad mood slipping despite his best efforts.

“I had a dream about a bad place and you were in it.
Your actions when I visited you confirmed that it had been your
dream not mine. I was naturally suspicious when you blocked me out
of your mind and went to Sapphire who talked to Luke who...” Kiyan
threw his hands into the air in despair.

“Alright! I get the point.” Kiyan couldn’t help the
slight smirk that erased the last of his bad mood.

“No you don’t. The point is that we are never going
to abandon you. You are stuck with us for good.” Terra crossed her
arms and waited for Kiyan to acknowledge her comment. Theo and
Kendra were watching the proceedings quietly with the rest of
Kiyan’s crew.

“So back to what I was saying. We need to figure out
where the portal is from the dark universe.” Kiyan was holding onto
at least a portion of his dignity not giving in to Terra. He knew
that she would extract a promise from him eventually but not in
front of his friends

“The way I see it.” Kiyan feared that Theo would make
another comment concerning the loyalty of his crew. “We shouldn’t
go back to the past until we know where the portal is. Surely there
is more information available now than in the past concerning
it.”

“Sadly the individual drakken drones will only know
what they were programed to know. The only ones that might have any
knowledge about it are the dark lords and their private databases.
Last time I checked they were all fiercely competitive and
untrusting so they should all have the necessary data with each
dark lord.” Luke also seemed glad for the changed conversation
topic.

“That could well be true. From what I have observed,
the drakken drones seem to operate with some sort of hive
intelligence. Like they are connected on some level. You saw how
they reorganized the fleet of ten thousand ships like it was
nothing. I suspect that the ships under the employ of each dark
lord are also connected in a like manner. If that is the case then
I would only need access to the mainframe of one of their ships.”
Alec offered his analysis.

“Why not just see if you can find the carrier signal
they are using for the connection and log directly into the primary
server?” Kiyan wasn’t anxious to reveal his presence in the
universe.

“I have been trying to decrypt that signal since we
got here but I don’t expect to be very successful. Like Luke said,
the dark lords do not trust each other. They are using rotating
fractal encryption algorithms. Without the original equation and
the progression timestamp I don’t have much chance breaking the
floating code block.” Alec explained the necessity of having an
actual drakken drone ship. “With a ship, I can get the decryption
data from their mainframe and use the carrier wave. “