Solbidyum Wars Saga 4: Too Late for Earth (11 page)

“You don’t think I am good enough?”  She signed with a hurt look on her face, and I realized that I had said the wrong thing.

“Oh no, not that at all.  You are very good, but you are still very young.”  I replied hastily.

“If I had been armed and knew how to use these swords, Tanden would be alive now, and I would have killed Shydak, and you would not have been injured in the crash.”  Jenira signed so fast I could barely keep up with her hand movements.  Suddenly, I saw it; I realized that Jenira was blaming herself and her own weakness for Tanden’s death and my injury.

I was deeply moved by her statement and pulled her to me and hugged her.   “Jenira what happened on Goo’Waddle was not your fault.  Even if you had swords other things could have happened that would have ended in the same results.  What happened to me was in no way your fault; it was totally my own.  No one expects you to be responsible for life’s of others.”

“No one expects you to, either,” Jenira signed with a determined look on her face, “but you still take on that responsibility.”  She had me there, and I knew there was no way I would win this argument.  I gave her one last quick hug.  “Well, Jenira, I can say that anyone under your protection will be fortunate, and those who go up against you will be fools.  Now let me go shower-- I need to see what A’Lappe and Cantolla have been up to.”

I found A’Lappe and Cantolla sitting at an instrument console in the laboratory. The two seemed to be studying data on the screens before them.

“Something must be very interesting to have you two so mesmerized.”  I commented.

Both Cantolla and A’Lappe turned their heads to look back over their shoulders; in A’Lappe’s case, he needed to turn his body more because his short neck restricted his motion.

“Tibby, you’re just in time.”  Cantolla said.

“In time for what?”

“The readings we are getting from the probes we sent out, searching for another source of solbidyum.”  A’Lappe replied.

“You’re getting readings already?  It’s only been a few months since you sent the probes out; they couldn’t possibly be at the locations you were sending them to, let alone for the signals to get back to us.”

“That’s true,
if
we were waiting until the probes made it to their destinations, and
if
we were using conventional transmission methods.”  A’Lappe replied.

“I take it from the way you said that you have discovered another method?”

A’Lappe grinned.  “I didn’t but Cantolla did.”  I looked at Cantolla, who sat there with a huge Cheshire Cat grin.  Cantolla had initially disliked working with A’Lappe, primarily because she hated sharing the glory for discoveries; fortunately A’Lappe didn’t mind sharing the glory or even letting someone else take credit for them.  In the end, the two worked out very well as a team, and though I didn’t doubt that Cantolla had made the discovery, I suspect that A’Lappe may have contributed greatly to steering her in the right direction.

“So what is this great discovery, and how did you make it?  Or must I play 20 questions to get it?”

Cantolla grinned and with a tilt of her head began, “Well, it was sort of your idea Tibby, in an indirect way.  I remembered you talking about sympathetic particles that you recalled from something you called Quantum Mechanics, I believe.  It got me thinking, and I managed to get hold of some of the transmissions that the admiralty has been intercepting from your Earth.  From that, I was able to learn a bit more about them from those shows you called documentaries.  Very interesting stuff actually, how two sympathetic particles, no matter how far separated in the universe, will react the same way at the same instance.  The most difficult part was isolating such particles, and to be honest, I had no idea where to begin to look.  A’Lappe was the one to figure that one out, and the solution was ingenious.”

I looked at A’Lappe who just sat there blinking his eyes in that almost hypnotic manner.  “Well?”  I said, “Must I do some special trick to get you to tell me?”

“No,”  A’Lappe said with a grin, “I was just wondering if I might be able to bargain telling you this in return for information on how you know when I am present even though cloaked.  But then I figure if I don’t tell you, Cantolla will.  Okay, here it is, plain and simple-- I use the replicator.”

“Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”  I said in one of those “DUH!” moments.

“Well it wasn’t quite as easy as all that,” Cantolla added, “It took some configuring, since our replicators are not capable of replicating some things, and most of what they do replicate tends to be organic materials.  However, we are able to replicate some synthetics, like plastics, and there is one conductive plastic molecule that it can produce that could be reconfigured to suit our purposes.  It took a few months, but while you were busy on Goo’Waddle and recovering from your accident, it gave us enough time to get it worked out. The trick was in the receiver; we had already placed the transmitting particles on the probes, but the receivers weren’t completed and had never been tested.  They still are a bit crude, but we are able to get simple information from the probes and extrapolate from that.”

“So?  What are you discovering?  Have you found a new source of solbidyum?”

“Ahh… no!”  A’Lappe said somewhat dejected.  “However, we may have found something new, and almost as good.  We’ve been detecting some substance in the area of that collapsed black hole that is emitting energy of a nature similar to solbidyum, it would not be quite as powerful as a solbidyum fueled reactor, but more powerful than the 10X fusion reactors.”  A’Lappe paused; Cantolla picked up where he left off.  “We won’t really know until we have a chance to get there ourselves. The readings we are picking up now are from the probe when it is still a long way from the pit.”

“Pit?”

“The pit is what A’Lappe and I call the collapsed black hole.”

“Oh I see.”

A’Lappe spoke again as Cantolla finished.  “I think we can assume, if our assumptions are right, that there is a lot more of whatever is producing this energy than there was solbidyum at the site where the Federation found it. We speculate there will be enough to supply it to our ships and those of the Federation, and it will have ample energy for cloaking and RMFF shields as well.  There would not be enough to power an entire planet like solbidyum does, but for a ship not much is required.”

“That’s great news,” I responded.  “Is there any chance we will be passing near this area on our way to Earth?”

“I’m sorry Tibby, but the answer to that unfortunately is no.  The pit is in the opposite direction and quite far off as well.”

“Damn!”  I exclaimed.  “It’s just going to have to wait until we finish our trip to Earth.  In the meantime, see if the two of you can improve on this sympathetic particle stuff and see if you can develop a means of transmitting visual data with it.  The Deep-Space Communicator you developed is great; I am impressed with the security of the system, but we need a system of communication that allows us to transmit visual data as well and to more than one person at a time.”

“We’ve been working on it Tibby, but it's more complicated than it sounds.”  Cantolla replied with frustration in her tone.  She was about to say something else, when suddenly klaxons began sounding.  At the same time Stonbersa’s voice came over my com link.  “Tibby, this is Stonbersa.  We’re picking up what appears to be a fleet of ships ahead of us, and from the data we are picking up, one of the ships appears to be a Tottalax ship.”

“I’m on my way to the bridge.”  I responded.  “A’Lappe and Cantolla, I would like for you to join me.”  I was headed for the door when A’Lappe stopped me.

“Tibby, where are you going?”

“To the bridge!  You heard what the Commodore said.”

“Yes, Tibby but you’re not planning on walking all the way there are you?  It’s at the other end of the ship; it will take you over 30 minutes to walk there.”

“Well how else are we going to get there?  Don’t tell me you’ve invented a teleporter?”

“No, Tibby we can use one of the tube shuttles.”

“Tube shuttles?”

“Oh come on now Tibby, don’t tell me you’ve owned this ship for nearly 3 years now, have lived aboard it half of that time, and don’t know about the tube shuttles?!”  Once again, I realized I was about to learn how ignorant I was about my own ship.

A’Lappe and Cantolla walked over to a door arch bordered by a light-blue frame.  I saw numerous of these arches about the ship near the outer hull, but I had never given them any attention.  I didn’t see any door button, which is probably why I had never opened one in curiosity.  “Shuttle!”  A’Lappe said while facing the door.

“Shuttle arrival in 20 seconds” a voice responded.  A’Lappe turned and looked at me with a smile.  Twenty seconds later the doors opened, revealing a small shuttle with four seats.  We entered and each took a seat.  “Destination?” the voice requested.  “Bridge” A’Lappe replied.  “Bridge arrival in 3 minutes and 27 seconds, “the voice responded as the shuttle began moving.

“Have these shuttles always been here, or are these something new that has been added that I never heard of?”

I heard Cantolla sort of snort and chuckle at the same time.  “Really Tibby, all this time and you never have used a shuttle on this ship?”

“Ahh no… I’ve pretty much been walking everywhere.”

“And Kala never mentioned them to you or showed them to you?”

“No, and now that I think about it, Kala and I have never walked any great distance on the ship together.  I’ve seen these doors about the ship along the outer hull, but never knew what they were.”

A’Lappe responded, “The shuttles only run along the outer hull. There are shuttles on every deck level as well, and of course, there are the lifts that go from level to level; those are placed more in the interior of the ship.  I know you are aware of those, Tibby, because I have seen you use them all the time.”

“Well yes, I know about the lifts.  However, when you gave me your tour of the ship, you never showed me the external shuttles.”

“Well, no, I wanted you to see the ship, not take a ride.”  A’Lappe responded as the shuttle began slowing down.

“Arriving at bridge station,” the computer voice said as the doors opened to reveal a section of the corridor just outside the bridge area.  As we exited the shuttle, I saw Marranalis approaching from the interior corridor.

“Do you think it’s a Brotherhood Armada?”  He asked.

“We won’t know until we get in there and see.”  I answered, as the door to the bridge opened.

Captain Kerabac and Commodore Stonbersa stood looking at the large vid screen that encompassed the front wall.  “Tibby,” the Commodore began, “We’re counting 16 ships, including one that we believe belongs to the Tottalax.  They seem to be heading toward the weapon system located nearby in the spiral arm of the Galaxy.”

“Are you sure they are Brotherhood ships?”  I asked.

“Not really, but they are the type of Markazian style corvettes they use, and that Tottalax ship is pretty unique.  Who else could they be?”

“We can’t go taking action against them unless we are sure.  For all we know the Tottalax ship could be a trade ship,” I answered.  “A’Lappe, could you take the communication console and see if you can tap into any ship to ship communications to see if you can discover who they are and their intents?”

“Certainly Tibby.  Commodore, with your permission?”  The Commodore motioned to the communication console in a bowing like gesture, as the operator seated there surrendered the chair to A’Lappe.

A’Lappe had previously cracked the communication codes used by the Brotherhood and was a genius at accessing their communication.  He fussed over the console for a while and then announced that he was picking up signals between the ships, as he keyed the dialog into the bridge speakers for all of us to hear.

“… So we took leave for three days at Belteeor and me and Groen found us a place with some really sweet women,” a male voice was saying.  A second male voice followed, “Was it at a place called the Silver Nydex?”

“Nah, not that place-- the women there aren’t that special, and besides, I hear they got diseases.”

“Ha, like that ever bothered you before, with the new nano-biotics we got now, what’s it matter anyway?

“I don’t think that conversation is what we’re looking for,” I said, “Just where is Belteeor anyway?; we might be able to determine where they’ve been.”

“Not necessarily,” Marranalis chimed in. “we don’t know when he was talking about; it could have been last week --or last year for all we know.”

“You’re right, I didn’t think of that.  Try another frequency, A’Lappe.”

A’Lappe turned in his chair and made some more adjustments to the controls.

“…need to make a stop at one of our bases to get a new one.  This one is shot, and I don’t want to have it break down at a critical time.”  A voice came through the speakers.

“There may be a spare aboard the
FORMEETE
, they are supposed to be carrying spares and supplies for the fleet.”

“The
FROMEETE
… huh?  I didn’t even know we had a ship in this fleet carrying spares.”

“That’s right, your ship just joined up with us last week, they probably never got around to telling you.  You’re one of the ships that fled Goo’Waddle?”