Escape to Earth-The Legacy of a Conqueror (14 page)

Chris nodded, “Let’s talk about what we need to do.”

“Obviously, we need to look at M-86 and then see where the Progen are in their ship developments.”

“Where do you think we need to go first?”

“M-86.”

Chris laughed, “Well you know what they say about great minds. M-86 it is.”

“Why do you want to go there first?”

“Before we can take on the Legends and their forces, we have to see if the other galaxy represents a danger to us.”

“That’s how I see it.”

“I want a few more days with Michael and I understand our ship won’t be ready for another week. If you want to take a look at what they’re building for us and offer suggestions, I’d appreciate it.”

“My time is free and I’ll be glad to handle it.” Allison stood up and stretched, “I’ll go and start doing that in the morning. I’ll stay in contact and let you know if I see anything you would want input on.”

“Thank you, Allison.”

“Glad to do it.” She grabbed her towel, turned, and headed up the beach. Chris stayed and saw a pink and blue sail in his mind.

• • •

The next morning Allison parked the pod outside a giant manufacturing facility and walked through the entrance. She saw the giant converters scattered around the building and started walking into the giant structure. She walked up on an A-Pod that was being finished and saw the engineer working on the scoops. “Excuse me.”

The engineer looked up and saw the woman dressed in a military uniform. He looked closer and saw the two stars on her collar. He jumped up, “I’m sorry Admiral. I didn’t see you coming!”

“That’s ok. Can you direct me to Amanda and Trevor Ambrose?”

The engineer turned and pointed to the north end of the building, “They’re working on a ship over there.”

Allison smiled, “Thank you.” She walked away and the engineer watched her leave. He was stunned by what he saw. Her red hair was as fine as silk and her complexion was flawless. She moved with a smoothness he had never seen before. If ever an image was needed to show perfection, a picture of her would do it. He stared at her until she disappeared around the bow of the ship he was working on and he shook his head. He bent down to continue working but couldn’t get the image of the woman out of his mind. It was an image he would remember for the rest of his life.

There were numerous engineers that stopped what they were doing to watch Allison pass through the building. She was quite unaware of how beautiful she was and didn’t notice the stares as she moved between the ships being built in the huge facility.

She walked around the nose of a B-Pod and heard, “Allison, we’re over here!” She looked to the left and saw Amanda jumping out of the port of a large ship. Of course large was a relative term. It was small when compared to a battleship but it was twice the size of the pods. Amanda ran up and hugged her, “It’s good to see you again.”

Allison smiled, “It has been too long. How’s Trevor?”

“He’s inside installing the three computers. Come on, I have a lot to show you.”

“Lead the way.”

“You’re going to like your new ship. It’s really something.” Amanda started talking at a fast rate and though Allison wanted to interrupt her to ask questions, there was no way to get a word in edgewise. She mentally listed the questions and decided to hold them for Trevor. As they walked closer to the huge pod, Allison saw four disruptors instead of the usual three. They were lower on the hull and the twin barrels extended out of the ship’s hull from about six inches above. Amanda pointed at them and said, “Those are the new disruptors. Each of the two barrels pack the same power as the old single barrel mounts. The barrels can fire in unison at a single target or they can be independently targeted. The smaller mounts allow them to swivel at three times the speed of the old mounts.”

Allison shook her head, “The old mounts weren’t slow, Amanda.”

Amanda paused her running commentary and said, “Compared to the new ones they are.”

She began speaking again and Allison stared at the new disruptor barrels. They were three times the diameter of the old. She stopped walking and said, “How can these be powered without weakening the defenses?”

Amanda stopped talking and Allison discovered how to get her questions answered. Amanda could talk up a storm but didn’t miss anything that was said. “That’s one of the real surprises I was telling you about.”

“Oh?”

“The four DE reactors have been taken out and they’ve been replaced by one larger reactor.”

Allison stopped walking again and looked at Amanda. Amanda saw her expression and stopped talking. “Amanda, we switched between those reactors to use them where they were most needed. We could increase the power to our thrusters, disruptors, or force field.”

Amanda smiled, “Allison, the new reactor is more than ten times more powerful than all four of the ones they replace. You can still increase the power wherever you choose but there is a lot more of it than before. There is also no delay in making the changes unlike the switches that had to be used before.”

“How long will a full charge last?”

“The ship will have its mini-scoops extended whenever it’s not being hit by an enemy’s beams. The new reactor stays at full charge and will keep its charge a lot longer than the old reactors.”

“That’s incredible.”

Amanda smiled, “It is, isn’t it? Come on inside and take a look at the new stardrive.”

“New stardrive?”

Amanda lowered her head and leaned in to Allison and whispered, “The universe just got a lot smaller.” She grabbed Allison’s hand and started running toward the port. Allison started running with her and wondered if Amanda ever ran out of steam. It appeared she didn’t.

After meeting Trevor inside, she made a decision. She pressed her wrist unit and saw Chris appear, “Sir, I really think you need to come here and meet with Amanda and Trevor.”

“But I want to…”

“Bring him with you. It’s time he started learning about our ships.”

Chris looked away and she saw his lips moving quietly and then she heard, “ALLLLLL RIIIIIGHT!!!” He looked back at Allison and said, “We’re on our way.”

• • •

Two hours later, Chris was sitting in one command chair with Michael on his lap. Allison sat in the other command chair and Trevor and Amanda sat in folding chairs they brought in for the meeting. They brought Chris up to speed on the new armaments and reactor and Michael’s eyes stayed wide the entire time. Allison was shocked the young boy didn’t interrupt them once and then she realized that Chris was answering his questions telepathically.

Chris said, “I don’t understand what you mean by this new stardrive being faster.”

Trevor raised his hand and Amanda closed her mouth, “Let me try to explain.” Amanda leaned back in her chair and nodded. Trevor looked at Chris and Allison and smiled, “We discovered something entirely by accident. We had an A-Pod’s stardrive go haywire. It was attempting to skip back to Earth to have repairs done before it quit working all together. The thing is, the probes kept detecting it disappearing from the void and then it would reappear in a different place a lot further than it could have traveled in normal space. After the last attack, an alarm was sounded and a squadron of A-Pods was sent out to intercept it. They found it skipping in and saw it repeatedly disappearing and reappearing in the void. When they contacted the pilot, he kept telling them that he had not entered normal space. He insisted he had never left the void.”

Chris tilted his head, “Where was it going?”

“No one knew and they contacted us as it moved closer to Earth. The thing that didn’t make sense was that each time it disappeared, it would reappear a long way ahead of the Pods escorting it back to Earth. They were all traveling at their maximum speed so there was no way that pod should have been able to move that far ahead of them. I ordered them to stop the pod and have it remain stationary in the void. It still disappeared and reappeared.”

“What was going on?”

Trevor tilted his head and smiled, “Chris, something remarkable. We took a repair team out to the ship and managed to get an engineer on board before it disappeared. He hooked up his analytic computer to the drive and discovered that the stardrive’s frequency modulator was going out. It couldn’t hold a frequency.” Trevor smiled and said, “It wasn’t going into normal space. We activated its scanners and found out that it was going into a small area of space that separates normal space from the void.”

“Say what?”

“The engineer on board was able to get a reading on the frequency that the stardrive was using when it disappeared. It took us a few weeks but we were finally able to duplicate that frequency and set a pod up so it could switch between the normal frequency and the new one. When we switched to the new frequency, the pod disappeared.”

“Was it able to see anything from that band?”

“Remember, the pilot never had any indication that he left the void. He was able to see everything in the void just as he normally would. We also discovered that he could see normal space as well.”

Chris looked at Allison and saw her shaking her head. He looked back at Trevor and said, “This is a way of hiding that can’t be traced.”

“Not until another species finds that barrier. We can track a ship in that barrier because we know its frequency. But that’s not the remarkable thing about this.” Chris stared at Trevor and he said, “We can travel to the Virgo Cluster almost instantaneously.”

“WHAT?!”

Amanda couldn’t restrain herself any longer. “We decided to check it out for speed and we set our course for open space in the Virgo Cluster. We overshot it by a million light years.”

Chris looked at Trevor and he nodded. “How were you able to find your way back?”

“M-87 can be seen from a lot further than that. We reduced the power going to the thrusters and found we could modulate the speed, but it wasn’t easy. We’ve developed a new system to make it easier but you don’t want to go to full thrusters. You could end up at the other end of known space. Maybe even further.”

“Have you tried firing a disruptor from that barrier?”

“That’s also something you don’t want to do. We used an unmanned Pod to do it and it blew up in a rather big way. You’ll have to leave the barrier and go into normal space or the void to use the ship’s weapons. That band is more sensitive to them than the void.” Trevor paused and said, “There’s one more thing.”

“What is that?”

“The gravity limit has no effect on a ship traveling in the barrier.”

Michael looked at Chris and said, “AWESOME!”

Everyone laughed and Chris looked at them, “And you’re building this ship with that new stardrive?”

“Yes, we are.”

Chris looked at Michael sitting on his lap, “I guess you know what this means.”

“What?”

“If I need to take a nap or break, I can be home to do it with you.” Michael’s eyes went wide and his mouth went wide open. He wrapped his arms around Chris’s neck and squeezed him tightly. Allison watched them and felt how much they loved each other. She thought about what she heard and knew her old fleet formations could now be thrown out the door. This was a new era in controlling fleets of warships.

Chris looked at Trevor and Amanda, “Are you going to update our fleets to this new technology?”

Trevor looked at Amanda and then looked at Chris, “It can’t be done. These new ships take a lot longer to build because of this new technology.”

“What about the battleships?”

“It’s even more difficult with them. We’ve also measured the barrier and it’s a lot smaller than we thought. This vessel is about the largest that will safely fit inside it.”

Chris stared at them and then looked at Allison. She knew what he was thinking even though she wasn’t telepathic. She nodded and he turned back to Trevor, “You will immediately stop all construction on the Pods and battleships. You will focus on building as many of these new ships as possible.”

“I was hoping you would do this.”

“Why didn’t Lukas authorize it?”

“Because we are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. He feels we need as many ships as possible to avoid being overrun by numbers we can’t deal with.”

Allison shook her head, “Lukas hasn’t led a fleet of ships in combat. Quality trumps quantity.”

Chris smiled. He could see why Lukas had not committed to the new technology. Allison reassured him he was right. “Do as I order and I’ll handle any issues.”

Amanda jumped up and hugged Chris. Things were going to change.

• • •

Jinks walked into Lukas’s office and said, “Chris has ordered all construction be devoted to the new ship.”

“He is in command.”

“The reports I have coming in from the probes in M-87 show a massive buildup of warships.”

“What are you saying, Jinks?”

“If you have an invincible warship, it could not stop a million ships from attacking. They would swarm by it and attack around it.”

“Do you remember what the Silver Ships’ relatives are currently doing?”

Jinks looked at Lukas and tilted his head, “They’re hiding behind their force field while they’re building ships.”

“It may be that we will be forced to do the same. I agreed to not second-guess our chosen Commander. We will do what he wants.”

“You’re the boss.”

“No, he is, Jinks.”

Jinks smiled, “Yes, I guess he is.”

“You need to get busy.”

“Doing what?”

“These new ships aren’t going to fly themselves no matter how good they are. You need to get with Trevor and Amanda and develop a simulator to train the crews chosen to fly them.”

Jinks’ eyes went wide, “You’re right. I didn’t think about that. I’ll see you later.”

Jinks rushed out and Lukas sighed. He hoped Chris knew what he was doing. He had also seen the reports from the Progen building efforts. It was something to be very concerned about.

C
hris looked at his panel and had to look for the controls. He had been studying the control panel for three weeks but it was nothing like the panel he was accustomed to using. He shook his head and looked at Allison who was also looking around her panel. “Allison, we should take some time to really learn this ship’s controls before we go out.”