The Alpha Choice (40 page)

The console informed him there was someone at his door, Trang, and did he wish to speak to her? He assented, his subconscious would have to wait a little longer.

The image of Trang appeared before him, suggesting they talk. There was no questioning tone in her voice, it was the same cool, unemotional Trang he had come to expect. As far as she was concerned, the meeting was a given. She paused, after making the
suggestion
, making it obvious to Gorn she expected him to open the door. While he was less than happy at the thought, he knew the sooner he let her in, the sooner she would be out of sight of the Avatar.

Standing inside his quarters, she was no more cordial.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.

She nodded.

When he got the drinks and turned around, he found her standing right behind him; he had no idea she could move so fast, or so noiselessly.

‘We need to be seen together in public, as friends, otherwise people will think something’s wrong. The commander has given us a job to do, and we can’t do it effectively if we’re the subject of speculation.’

‘I suppose that makes sense,’ he muttered.

‘We could talk about our strategy,’ she again said it in such a way, Gorn knew it was more of a command than a suggestion. ‘Where do you suggest?’

He had to have regard for the presence of Garnoth, and his all-seeing Avatar. The machine monitored all areas, including the commander’s ready room, and Gorn thought it wise to keep to himself that the only area safe from prying eyes and ears, of the artificial kind, was his own quarters. In the short time he had been on board, he had been meticulous, ensuring misinformation was constantly streamed from his system. Other than confirmation he was in the room, it was impossible for anyone, or anything to get an accurate record of what was happening inside.

Although she could not have known it, Trang’s visit had been perfectly timed. What better than to have a steered conversation, keeping Garnoth informed of their intentions? It helped Gorn’s cause for the spymaster to believe they were seeking the same goal: the identity of any rebels on board. Much to her apparent surprise, he suggested they meet in the general recreation chamber.
 

An hour later they were sitting at a table sipping drinks, but before they had a chance to speak, Genir appeared as if from nowhere, a grin writ broad across his face, completely misinterpreting the reason for his friend being with a young woman. ‘I can see why you weren't interested in the beauties we met up with she,’ he indicated, with something approaching a leer, in the direction of Trang, ‘is incredible.’
 

Gorn stole a glance at his companion
.
‘We’re discussing duties given directly to us, by Commander Darl,’ he corrected his friend, without any suggestion as to what those duties were.
 

The mention of Darl's name was enough to send his friend, hurrying away.

He tried to apologise for Genir’s comments, but Trang simply shook her head, as if to say it was of no importance to her. From her body language, it was clear she wanted to get the meeting out of the way, as quickly as possible. Glancing around, she satisfied herself no one was within hearing distance, before speaking. ‘I don’t know what the commander expects from us. It’s been weeks, and I've not heard anything I can pass on to him. I’m worried we’ll be judged failures, if we can’t feed anything back, surely the man knew we were the wrong people to use?’ Gorn looked blank.

She sighed at his lack of comprehension. ‘We’re new here, we don’t know what their normal behaviour is, and have no way of knowing if they’re acting out of character.’

‘But,’ replied Gorn, ‘he said the only reason he can trust us is because we
are
new.’ She was beginning to look worried. ‘Look,’ he tried to reassure her, ‘we only have to keep our eyes and ears open, he made that clear to us. I don’t think for one minute he expects us to actually find anything. In any case, an Agency head is on board. If anyone’s likely to find a spy it’ll be him,’ he paused before adding, for the benefit of any eavesdropping Avatar, ‘and he probably wouldn’t be too pleased if we did anything to mess up his investigation.’

Trang looked a little more relieved. She downed what remained of her drink, and stood up. ‘I think you're right, and I don’t think we need to meet like this again,’ she looked straight at him, anticipating an answer.
 

He shook his head mutely, in agreement, whereupon she turned and walked briskly away. Looking after her, he tried to put out of his mind how she was making him feel. Finishing his own drink, he wondered how she would react if she ever discovered what and who he really was, shuddering at the thought.

Trang walked away, satisfied he suspected nothing. She had played her part well, but was aware of feelings for him that were struggling to reach the surface. Those feelings would be kept buried. Nothing could be allowed to get in the way of what had to be done; she needed to keep a clear head to ensure the success of Narol’s plot, before fulfilling the unpleasant, but necessary duty of assassin.

Ω

Returning to his quarters, Gorn monitored the response of the Avatar to his meeting with Trang. As hoped, the conversation had been promptly reported to Garnoth, who was amused that Darl expected to undermine his investigation with his own amateurish efforts. He played back the conversation as recorded by the Avatar.

‘Shall I continue to monitor the young officers?’

‘Do you seriously think they will uncover anything that will escape our attention?’ Garnoth asked, incredulously.

‘Need I remind you,’ his machine double replied, ‘notwithstanding my capabilities, and your experience, we cannot discount the possibility that, by pure chance, they may stumble upon something that will assist us. It is unlikely they would recognise the value of any such intelligence, but we ignore this resource at your peril.’

The spymaster looked at his mirror image for some long moments before replying. ‘Very well, minimal monitoring, and nothing more,’ the reflection inclined its head in acknowledgement.

The bait had been taken. Each time the Avatar monitored Gorn's systems for information to assist its master, a stealth routine would run. There would be no major incursions, merely unnoticeable alterations in its programming. The machine would remain wholly unaware of what was happening. Of course, it would have been almost impossible had Gorn been subject to the same level of scrutiny as everyone else on the ship, but thanks to Garnoth, it was no longer a problem.
 

Day by day the complex artificial brain, that was the core of the Avatar’s being, would be compromised. By the time they reached the target, the machine would do whatever he required of it, without being aware of what it was doing, and at whose behest. Its ignorance was perhaps, no bad thing as Gorn had already decided what his failsafe would be. As soon as Quasar and Horizon arrived, and if no alternative presented itself, he would have the Avatar take control of Eclipse, and fire upon Telluria. He had pinpointed a remote area as the target, to keep loss of life to a minimum, but there would need to be some loss of Tellurian life, if the Custodians were to be provoked.
 

He hoped for an alternative, knowing it to be unlikely. The deep down hollow feeling, overwhelmed any thoughts of danger or Trang, for a little while.

Ω

Three days following the unannounced arrival of Garnoth, with all pre-transit checks satisfactory, the mighty ship began her portentous journey.

Weft drive was dangerous to nearby planets, at the moment of activation, and protocol demanded the strictest safety precautions. Eclipse manoeuvred away from Te’ath at sub weft speed until it was ninety-million miles from the Te’an home world, allowing for a more than comfortable safety margin.

With a last look at Te’ath, Darl gave the order to activate the drive. After a few seconds, Eclipse glowed white, with the space surrounding her taking on the appearance of gelatinous liquid, then the warship disappeared. An observer viewing the event in slow motion would see the space around the ship distorting and rippling, as though stirred; the white glow expanding about six metres beyond the hull, then the huge glowing shape shrinking rapidly to nothing, as space returned to normal.
 

In the early days of weft drive development, it was noted the effect of activation upon surrounding objects could be devastating. Adjacent space-time became unstable to the extent that anything, within thirty light seconds, was utterly destroyed. The initial manned observation ships were lost before it was decided to use unmanned probes. Other than the original losses, it had eventually proved to be an efficient, and safe method of travel. Unlike traditional methods of hyperspace travel, which were much slower, the Weft presented a much more challenging perspective. For a start the weft was far more than a narrow tunnel through space, seeming to continue unending, in all directions. The possibilities like the weft itself, promised to be endless.

Likewise, the view of weft space was unusual. It was a uniform deep violet, with occasional flashes of indigo, which no-one was able to fathom. Different speculative theories abounded, the most popular being, other ships in transit, or a form of life existing solely within this part of space. At their current level of technology - the immediate consequence of becoming stationary within the Weft was to enter normal space - it was impossible to verify any hypothesis. When he finished his precocious paper on weft drive augmentation, Gorn decided he would, sometime in the future, revisit the larger questions posed by the Weft.

Even though the drive had the effect of
cutting through
normal space, the journey of seven and a half thousand light years would still take three weeks.

In the early days of weft travel, there were concerns as to possible collisions, which were soon laid to rest when reports from probes showed that all powers of navigation remained unaltered. More importantly, sensors were capable of traversing the entire length of the Weft to their exit point. If any object, ventured into a ship’s path, timely evasive action could be taken.

Fears had had also been voiced, as to what would occur when leaving weft space. The most commonly held concern was exiting the Weft inside a star or planet, particularly as most journeys were into populated star systems. It was soon noted that sensor range could be extended beyond the exit point, to a range of two hundred and forty-million kilometres. The fretful voices were stilled.
 

Even if the remnants of a supernova, or the event horizon of a black hole existed beyond sensor range, it would still be possible to pick up the warning signs necessary to recalibrate the exit.

Time spent within the Weft was, in the main, humdrum; the most pressing thing to vex the mind of a ship’s commander was preventing his crew from becoming bored. In the case of one crew member, there was more than enough to keep him engrossed.

Ω

Gorn's meetings with Narol were, for the most part, straightforward. She maintained her distance, as clearly witnessed by her staff, one of whom would be reporting back to Darl. Gorn knew all movements by senior officers were also being carefully scrutinised by Garnoth and his Avatar.
 

During this time with Narol he learned nothing more about her, and this troubled him. She had played her hand well, establishing a reason for the commander to throw the two of them together, but even Darl would expect to see some thawing in her manner. Yet nothing in what she said, or did assuaged his earlier misgivings. As a consequence, he conveyed little to her, save an implicit reassurance he was ready, for when his opportunity arose.
 

As the weeks passed he could vaguely sense in Narol, a steadily growing frustration at the lack of specific intelligence concerning his plans, and while there was no reason not to divulge those details, he felt, rather than thought, that the less he told her, the better. Unfortunately, he could not keep his progress on the Alpha Wave from her.

Soon after boarding, he discovered most of what he needed to know about the Wave, and as his knowledge grew, so did his fear. He knew what it was, and what it could do. Narol had been right, it had taken almost three thousand years to develop, and was instrumental in the decision of the Council to move against Telluria. If the subterfuge failed and the Custodians intervened, they would be destroyed. The Wave needed to be activated from three points in space, hence the presence of the three warships, where more than one would be overkill against the Tellurians.

When in just the right position, each ship would emit a cascading subsidiary wave, activating the Alpha Wave only when all three converged. There would be a disruption of space-time on the elementary particle level, resulting in the target, any target ceasing to exist. There had been concern expressed over the effectiveness of the weapon against the Custodians. Exhaustive analysis of their first encounter showed conclusively, that their downfall at Khitaa was brought about by a creature of pure energy. How could any weapon destroy them? The question was a reasonable one, they certainly did not want to be in the position of poking another stick at such a dangerous foe.
 

The doubts prompted exhaustive tests on the micro level, and eventually, even the most sceptical of the Council were convinced that nothing, not even the Custodians, could survive the Wave. The Council had not, as far as Gorn could tell from the records of their meetings, considered the ultimate consequence of deploying the Wave against a single Custodian. There were bound to be others. How would they react to one of their own being destroyed?
 

Once Gorn had set in motion his strategy involving the Avatar, he found time to complete his analysis of the science behind the Wave, to the smallest detail. It was flawed. He had no doubt the Council’s desired objective would be achieved, but he noted all experimentation had been on a much smaller scale than what would be unleashed above Telluria. His calculations revealed certain reactions when the Wave was executed on a scale, beyond the controlled experiments. If the disruption exceeded an optimum size - and what was planned, most certainly qualified – it would continue as a secondary wave, in an omnidirectional cascade from its point of origin, overtaking the ships in one direction, and Telluria with its moon, in another.