Earth Song: Twilight Serenade (27 page)

Lost ships were always balls and spears, as she called it, or variations of that. This was reminiscent of that theme, but only in an offhanded sort of way. It looked like five elongated cylinders, flattened, and aligned on their long orientation, thin sides connected to form a pentagon. It looked hollow down the center and the entire design was deceptive to its true size.

“How big is that?” Aaron wondered aloud.

“Just under two kilometers long,” Lilith said, her eyes wide in wonder.

“You know what it is?” Minu asked.

“There were only four built. They were the core of The People’s defenses. That is a Guul Dreadnought. Do you know what condition it is in?”

“The flyby we did with an Eseel revealed some damage, but nothing massive,” Cherise reported. “Frankly, none of us have any idea why it’s here.”

“How badass is that thing?” Minu asked her daughter.

“You remember the T’Chillen world killers?”

Minu said she did. Who could forget the sight of them killing millions of Rasa from orbit?

“The Guul were an order of magnitude more powerful. And yes, they could also devastate worlds.”

Chapter 28

June 22nd, 535 AE

Ghost Fleet #3, Aether System, Aether Nebula, The Frontier

Aether fundamentally changed the rules of the game. Minu had kept them moving as quickly as possible while they salvaged the ghost fleets in deep space. Their energy emissions would be a beacon from light years away that would eventually draw attention. Lethal attention.

Aether made it all different. There was no way they could be noticed. Deep in the nebula, the magnetar sending powerful waves of magnetic energy and gamma ray bursts, the ghost fleet was unnoticeable. Invisible. Utterly undetectable. The salvage fleet took a much needed breather, slowing their pace and working to consolidate their prizes.

The first week everyone wanted to visited Midgard, as it was officially known labeled. Many found it strange and exotic. Its perpetual darkness and animals that had no fear of the new visitors disturbed the Beezer. They retreated to the vastness of space and back to work after just one visit.

In response to her calls another Ibeen arrived full of human and Beezer personnel. She’d left with a few people many months ago and now there were more than a thousand beings in her fleet operations. Cherise was not only a huge help, she was essential.

Their stores were being so rapidly depleted that Minu sent Cherise planetside to investigate the vast caches of foodstuffs. She brought with her a Ranger medical technician and a pair of crystalline medical bots. She returned with tons of grains, tubers, and carefully frozen sea foods. The seafood was fish and several varieties of exotic and delectable crustaceans.

“There are dozens of warehouses full of this!” Cherise explained as they sampled the food.

“And it’s all edible?” Aaron wondered, trying a bread made from some of the grain.

“Except for a fungus and some kind of a sea slug. And the medical database says those will do fine for the Rasa.”

“They are delicious,” Kal’at hissed around a mouth of fungus slug stew. “It will go wonderful with the squidge we harvest on Romulus!”

By the end of the second week the evaluation of the ships had been completed. It went much quicker than Minu had hoped. There were none of the earlier booby-traps found on the second ghost fleet.

Their efforts would yield them two more Ibeen for a total of five, three more Fiisk for a total of six, and three operational Kaatan. The latter was the most exciting to Lilith, naturally.

The best news, at least partially, came when Lilith pronounced the Guul as viable.

“As we suspected from superficial examination, the dreadnought is substantially undamaged. It saw extensive combat during the retreat. I believe it was brought along to act as the main siege engine against the enemy’s home worlds, and never reached its intended target.

“The Guul is designed for assault, not defense. It depends on squadrons of fighters and Eseel to keep enemies at bay. It would only enter a system once space superiority is assured. Its primary weaponry is all energy based, and defenses missile based. Forced to retreat, the Guul expended its defensive missile magazines and became progressively vulnerable. Then it ran out of fuel.”

“All ships use EPCs for fuel,” Aaron pointed out, “why didn’t they just refuel it?”

“Because the Guul doesn’t use replaceable EPCs. It uses fusion power plants. Twenty of them, four per section, to recharge massive banks of EPCs which in turn power the offensive armament and propulsion. Those reactors operate on deuterium. The Guul’s deuterium tanks are empty.”

“So they mothballed it here,” Minu said, half to herself.

Lilith nodded in agreement. “That is my theory, yes. The People had some strategy to come back and salvage these losses. Except for some of the debris fields, most of what we found is either salvageable, or could be used to cobble together operational ships. The Guul would have been the center of a new fleet of ships returned to life.”

“Can we make use of it?” Minu asked.

“Like all the ships we’ve come across except the one Kaatan, there are no combat intelligences,” Lilith reminded her.

“I know, but besides that?”

“The Guul uses the same defensive missiles as I do. We have adequate stores to give it a basic loadout. Kal’at assures me he almost has the fabrication plants on Kiile Alpha operational, at which point we could fabricate unlimited amounts of missiles. The combat damage is negligible. The only real problem is the deuterium.”

“Fusion reactors are used to limited utility by some species,” Kal’at interjected. “It is often a tradeoff. Buying charged EPCs might be expensive, but so is deuterium. It is a matter of your sources and general resourcefulness.”

“So we can purchase deuterium?” Cherise asked.

Kal’at nodded in agreement.

“Will it draw attention?”

“Perhaps some. But humans are a minor species, so this is not as uncommon as you might think. However there are not many reactors available for sale. If you have not purchased one, it might cause great curiosity why you are seeking fuel for one.”

Minu considered. “Maybe if we buy the fuel they’ll think we’re stockpiling prior to buying the reactor?” Everyone thought that was a possibility. “So the ship is viable if we can get the fuel. As soon as the fabrication plants are up and running let’s start feeding armaments to the Guul.” Cherise made some notes.

And finally as that week came to an end, they began moving the ships that were to be brought back to life into direct orbit of Midgard, and they activated the firebase.

The huge facility came to life, its wide promenade of living and working quarters were filled with atmosphere and reconfigured to work for humans and Beezer as well. The long preserved stores were opened and food prepared for the first time. And in less than a day the firebase’s powerful gravitic systems were maneuvering ships in to dock with moorings so work could begin.

“It isn’t a full shipyard,” Lilith said as she watched the firebase’s systems begin to do light maintenance work on one of the already operational Ibeen, “but it’s a million times better than what we had until now.”

Watching the firebase come to life and the pace once again take a massive leap, Minu came to a decision she’d been struggling with.

“Lilith, we need to make a run home.”

“We can request whatever you need from the next Ibeen run due in a week.”

“Not this time,” she said, “I need to go back myself. First I’ve been gone far too long, and second this will require my personal presence. And before you ask, I cannot explain at this moment. All in good time.”

“As you wish.”

Minu did wish, wished she could know if she’d upset the girl. But the young woman didn’t easily show emotions.

“The problem is the days it will take to get out of the nebula and far enough away to use the tactical drive,” Minu said. “And every time we leave we risk being spotted.”

“Then I have a solution to that problem,” Lilith said. “I’ve been slowly gathering hyper-accurate gravitational maps of the nebula since we arrived in proximity to the magnetar. It is unusual in my ways, not the least of which is the regularity and narrow angle of its gamma ray bursts.

“It turns out that that wasn’t the only unusual thing about it. The star has an extremely high gravitational field. Since it is essentially a neutron star, this is no surprise. However the proximity of Asgard to the orbit of Midgard caught me by surprise. It did not make sense. Like the rest of the system, its orbit had been modified. I didn’t make sense of it until I finished my gravitic system maps. There is a LaGrange liberation point between the star and Asgard.”

“Why is that significant?” Minu asked.

“Because such a gravitic eddy is essential within a system if you wish to employ the tactical drive.”

“You mean we can use the tactical drive in Aether?”

“At that one point, yes. And nowhere else within the nebula. It is truly astounding. I had assumed it would be impossible, thus I never looked for such a place.”

Minu smiled as she considered the implications. The climb out of the nebula, limited to less than a few multiples of the speed of light, took weeks. Now they could disappear and reappear a hundred light years away in the blink of an eye. Using the Kaatan, she could be back on Bellatrix in a couple days!

“Good job, baby,” Minu said, and touched her gently on the arm.

“Thank you, mom. I am only sorry it took this long to recognize the situation.”

Minu made a dismissive gesture. “Forget that. Get the senior staff together. I need to tell them what’s going on so we can prepare to leave.”

Chapter 29

Julast 1st, 535 AE

Bellatrix Star System

Leaving had not been an easy thing for Minu to do. It wasn’t her style to leave anything important in someone else’s hands to complete. For many years since becoming Chosen she’d done almost everything she could herself. Her ideas, her planning, her implementation, and most importantly her hard work.

Packing up and leaving the salvage operations in Kal’at’s hands, even as capable as those clawed hands were, went against her every instinct.

“There is more than enough to keep your people, Bran Esterosa’s team, and the Beezer completely occupied for the foreseeable future here,” she’d told the scientist at their departing.

“We will take care of it,” Kal’at had told her, nodding in that disconcerting way the Rasa had adopted from their human allies. Minu smiled at that. She’d come to respect the beings as much as most humans, and more than some. She counted Kal’at’s brother, Var’at, as one of her best friends. Once her most bitter enemy, now she depended on him like few others.

“He is most capable,” Lilith said. “I have given command authority on the Fiisk to him. It will follow his orders for security. I believe, however, now that we have a tactical drive location, there is no danger of this site being found.”

“Get this mess organized and ready to start relocated materials,” Minu instructed Cherise who said she would. “More importantly be ready to hand this off to your subordinates as soon as possible. My commander of logistics shouldn’t be out here ramrodding this herself.”

They’d left in the Kaatan through the tactical jump point, a full dozen Eseel gunboats as escort. Selain and his squad went with them, the further training of the Rangers was left to Captain Tyler Pape who would also provide security.

When they jumped out a hulking Ibeen was only meters behind them, piloted by Lilith remotely. The tactical jump executed and took both ships through.

“It’s a risky move,” Lilith admitted. “The area of effect only extends so far from the ship. If we’re off either way, we could collide or the Ibeen could be cut in half.” The dozen Eseel were tucked in just a meter away from the Kaatan hull.

Minu approved though, it was too important that trade continued. She planned to rendezvous with a pair of Beezer-crewed Ibeen on her return. Bringing two in would be even more difficult than taking one out. She decided to cross that bridge when she came to it.

They’d appeared almost a hundred light years outside of the nebula at the edge of a supermassive blue-white star. The interference behind them from the star made them nearly invisible. The Ibeen departed immediately through the star system, escorted by a pair of Ibeen while Lilith stayed and used her ships sensors. The other ten Ibeen floated motionless around the Kaatan like a glimmering neckless.

It took a few minutes before Lilith spoke up.

“I have neutrino traces in the vicinity,” she reported.

“Other ships?” Minu asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Multiple ships, various times.” A display in the CIC came alive showing crisscrossed paths all around the region.

“They’re looking for us,” Minu said.

“I agree,” Lilith said. “It’s a textbook search pattern. And it confirms your suspicion that they were following us. I was wrong about that.”

“Call it a mother’s intuition.”

Lilith looked at her for a long, measured moment. Minu nodded in further affirmation and Lilith’s expression got suspicious.

“Better just walk away,” Aaron advised his daughter.

“I’m floating here, walking would be impractical.”

They stayed for several more hours until the two escort Eseel returned. At which point Lilith brought them about and moved away at a relatively slow speed to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

They took a vastly different course when leaving the system and a few hours later came to the next point where a tactical jump was possible.

It took a minute for Lilith to get the Eseel in place before they could jump.

“I might have to consider a modification to the hull if this becomes standard operating procedure,” she said after the now familiar discontinuity of the tactical jump. “The battle riders make more sense to me now.”

“Later?” Minu suggested. “We have things to do.”

The rest of the trip home went quickly. Minu used the quantum communicator to make some arrangements while they traveled. By and large it was a day on average between jump points, but sometimes only hours. Mindy didn’t seem bothered by the tactical jumps at all. She slept most of the time, and the one incidence when she was awake she just looked around with a confused look afterwards then went back to nursing.

And then the sun of her birth was shining in the simulated windows within the CIC on the morning of Julast 1st, and Minu realized how much she’d missed her home. 

“Has it only been five months?” she wondered aloud.

“Almost to the day,” Lilith confirmed.

“A lot longer for me,” Aaron reminisced. “The closest I was almost a year ago was Coorson, when I was taken by the Tanam.”

“There will be a reckoning for that,” Minu said, more to herself than to anyone else.

From the arrival point to Bellatrix was only a few minutes. As they approached lunar orbit Lilith dispatched all but two of her escorting Eseel. They moved out to just beyond the further orbit of Remus where they would act as defensive perimeter for the world from now on. Ten unsleeping guardians ready to fight to the death.

They swept past the tiny dark moon of Remus and into orbit with Lilith’s usual cool precision. As they slowed they got a wonderful look at the fist Highguard station, now well under construction.

“That’s really coming along,” Aaron marveled. “I didn’t know they’d have this much done. It was only an idea when we left. Before I was taken.”

“It was only an idea when you left,” Lilith said as she appraised the construction with her sensors. The station was built along standard Concordian designs that the Chosen had observed for over a century. Concentric rings around a central hub, spun for essentially free artificial gravity.

“How many are we going to build?” Aaron asked his wife.

“Phase one is three, arranged in equilateral points of geosynchronous orbits. Phase two, if we get there, will be two more in polar orbits and three more between the initial three. None will be as big as the first three, though. These are to be working stations for freight transfer and ship maintenance. The other five will be defensive only.”

“The orbital forts to go with the groundside ones,” Aaron remarked and nodded in appreciation. “My wife doesn’t think small.”

“With the Phoenix shuttles, it’s pretty cheap actually. And we’ve had crews doing a lot of the work manually. It’s our version of what they called the civil air patrol on old Earth. They’re being trained to work on spaceships and don’t even know it.”

“So why do they think they’re building orbital starship facilities if most humans are unaware we have ships?” Lilith wondered.

“They’re told we’re going to build some ships to exploit other planets in our system,” Minu told her. “We don’t have to keep up the lie much longer.” At least she hoped so. They now had twelve capital ships under human control, and sixty-six Eseel gunboats. Lilith’s estimates were that it could take as many as twenty thousand crew to effectively man all the ships they had. It was a daunting figure.

“Highguard station Alpha this is Kaatan inbound,” Minu called to them on radio as they slid into a lower orbit and only a few thousand kilometers away, “First Minu Groves returning home.”

“Kaatan this is Highguard Alpha,” a practiced voice replied. “Welcome home First Groves!”

“Good to be home, station. We’ll park at two kilometers and come over via a shuttle.”

“Unnecessary, Kaatan. Docking Station #1 is operational. We’re sending a navigational radar beam now to guide you in.”

Lilith looked impressed and nodded her head that she had the data.

“Very well, station, we are on approach. Be advised, two Eseel will remain at distance on autonomous control.”

“Acknowledged, Kaatan. A reception party is on the way up from the surface and should arrive at the same time as you do.”

“Understood. Kaatan out.”

The approach was a simple one for Lilith. Maneuvering in combat at fractions of C against multiple enemies was her natural environment. Snuggling up to a station still under construction was no stretch. Even with several Phoenix shuttles, a dozen little orbital tugs, and a myriad of suited construction people and bots.

The majority of the Eseel peeled off, just as Lilith had explained they would, racing out of sight to take up their long watches. The final two spread out and slowed as they approached the station.

As they neared Minu watched work come to a gradual stop. All over the station, ships and reflective helmets turned to gawk at the approaching Kaatan. One hundred and twenty five meters of gleaming sleek metal slowed rapidly as it approached. Minu could see suited figures pointing and waving. Then she realized why. Most of these people had never seen an actual starship in their lives. First of many, she thought to herself.

The ship nudged up to the docking collar on the largely skeletal station with no sense of contact. A little display window Lilith created showed the hard dock. The station’s collar changed shape and perfectly matched the Kaatan’s lock.

“Looks like human tech,” Aaron said with a gleam in his eye. Minu knew he was hoping Groves Industries had built it.

“We have a good dock,” Lilith said. “And another Phoenix shuttle just arrived at the station from the surface.”

“We’ll see you at the airlock,” Minu told her daughter and headed out of the CIC followed by her husband.

In their quarters the found Mindy still asleep. Minu bundled the baby up into a sling, given to her by Cherise as a birthing gift back when the woman had first come aboard. Aaron played the good poppa and shouldered the baby’s bag and both of their packs.

“Let’s go,” Minu said and headed down to the airlock.

The inside lock irised open to show the more conventional swinging design the humans used. This door was also opening at the same time to show a party waiting for them.

Minu and Aaron stepped into the lock and stopped when she saw a three black star Chosen waiting at the front of the reception party. She recognized her suggestion for command of their space command, Michael Franken. She’d first gotten to know him as the launch room commander many years ago.

The man stepped forward and gave a respectful bow. “First, welcome home.”

“Glad to see Dram picked you for station commander,” Minu said and returned the bow, tucking Mindy in as she did. “Kaatan returning. Request permission to come aboard?”

“Granted,” he said and gestured inside.

Minu noted his formerly brown hair was going gray as she entered the station.

“That’s enough of that shit,” growled the deep bass tenor of her second in command. Minu tried to give him a bow but found herself pulled into a careful hug instead. “And you brought a new future Chosen with you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Minu grumbled as Dram stroked the baby’s hair and placed a kiss on her head.

“I seem to recall your father saying something like that many years ago about his daughter.” Minu gave a harrumph. “Black hair? I was wondering if you’d only have redheads.”

“Blame me for that one,” Aaron said and the two men shook hands warmly. To the side Dram greeted Lilith who’d just floated through into the station with one of her mobility crystalline bots.

“Damn fine to have you back, son,” Dram said. “I knew the cats couldn’t kill you that easily. Have fun playing hooky with the squirrels?”

“Not hardly, sir.”

“No more of that sir, crap. Remember, you’re retired. Unless you want to go back to work?”

“I have plenty of work without putting a uniform back on, thanks.”

He was already admiring the workmanship of the Highguard station, even popping open an access panel to examine the internal workings.

Behind Dram, waiting patiently at attention, was Minu’s commander of the Rangers. Gregg stood stiffly, two of his division commanders with him, all resplendent in their tiger stripe uniforms.

Minu gently removed Mindy, still sleeping in the sling and handed both to Aaron who accepted without comment. Minu came to attention and Gregg brought his right hand up in a crisp salute, the two division commanders matching him precisely. 

Minu matched the salute, dropping it simultaneously before everyone smiled and the Rangers all stepped forward.

“First,” Aaron said and gestured to his two subordinates. “Your two newest division commanders. This is Major Prescott Blackman, Division Three. And Heather Mansford, Division Six.”

Minu stepped up and shook their hands in turn. She’d known both were on the list for a potential third star, and thus for a division commander slot. However she’d left the operation of the Rangers to Gregg and he made appointments as he saw fit. So this was the first she’d known of it.