By now, the senior staff of Daisy Hub knew who they were. No further notification was necessary to summon Holchuk, Jason Smith, Hagman, engineers Gouryas and Singh, and Doctor Ktumba to a strategy meeting in Drew Townsend’s “office” on AdComm. As they stepped off the tube cars, the attendees found chairs waiting for them, arranged in a semi-circle around the station manager’s desk. Townsend stood behind it and watched as they wordlessly took their seats.
Like Holchuk, Ruby and Lydia had already been briefed. They remained at their posts, monitoring the proceedings from the other side of C Deck and prepared to jump in whenever an additional comment or opinion seemed called for. When everyone was present, Drew began, in the most confident voice he could muster:
“All right, people, let’s pool what we know. I’ll tell you everything I can about what’s coming at us. Then I want to hear from you how we can prepare for it. Don’t hold anything back. No matter how impossible an idea may sound to your own ears, there could be someone on the station with the skills and knowledge to make it a reality.”
As heads began turning and bobbing, Townsend felt his own spirits rise. His people were divergent thinkers, and they were very good at what they did. They’d pulled together and figured things out in the past, achieving what for most others would have been wishful thinking. Somehow, they would find a way to do it again. Of course they would. They had to.
“The enemy is insectoid,” he told them. “Captain Rodrigues described it as a giant cockroach. According to the Nandrians, the Corvou do not engage outside their ships, so we don’t have to worry about being boarded. They’ll simply attack in great numbers with powerful weapons and use them to try to blow the station to bits. On the plus side of the ledger, they’re going to have to go through the Rangers and the Nandrians to do it.” This sparked a general murmur of approval. “On the minus side,” he continued, “there’s no guarantee that the Hub will be their first target. Agnosk seemed certain that it would be, because the Corvou have always attacked first at the coordinates where the war was declared. But the Corvou are operating under special circumstances this time, so we have to consider the possibility that they might change their tactics, bypassing us and hitting Earth first.”
“Or they could come through multiple Gates and try to take out both targets at once,” Jason Smith pointed out. “When I was still a Fleet officer, I saw a copy of the Gate map the Great Council had given us. Of the nearly three hundred Gates that open in Earth space, more than thirty lead to star systems outside our boundaries. Fleet Control and Space Installation Security by themselves don’t have the resources to guard every one of them. The Nandrians may be able to, but they probably won’t want to. Spreading yourself thin is never the smartest move in a war.
“As I see it, our problem is this: we’re expecting the main battle to be fought here, but if the Corvou force is large enough, and if the fighting is fierce enough, we’ll have no way of knowing whether they’ve split their offensive until it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“Definitely, that’s a problem,” Townsend agreed. “How do you suggest we counter it?”
Smith paused, visibly considering alternatives. “You said to entertain impossible solutions. Okay. Is there some way we could seal off the Gates we don’t want the Corvou using? Choosing our own battlefield would give us a tactical advantage, while also minimizing the collateral damage.”
“Well?” said Townsend, gazing the question at every face in the room in turn. “Does anyone know whether this is doable?”
“It is!” Lydia’s exultant cry vaulted over his wall of filing cabinets a second before she appeared at the end of it. “I don’t know exactly how, but Captain Takamura does, and O’Malley may as well. Remember the con we ran on Sullivan after the Marco Polo returned from alien space? Rob found all kinds of interesting data on that ship’s logs, and I know that he saved some of it.”
“Then get O’Malley up here,” Drew instructed her. “Let’s find out what he knows.” She gave him the OK signal with thumb and forefinger and disappeared again. “Meanwhile, assuming that we are able to confine the battle to our own coordinates, we’re going to need some damned impressive defenses. Mr. Gouryas, Mr. Singh, what have you got for us?”
The two engineers gestured to each other to begin. A second later, they did it again. Neither one wanted to speak first. This did not bode well.
Townsend exhaled audibly. “Do I have to choose?” he said with exaggerated patience.
Singh threw his partner a dirty look before rising from his chair. “All right. Before you all get your hopes up, understand that nothing I’m about to tell you is conclusive or has even been tested. It’s still just theory.”
“Fair enough,” Drew responded. “Let’s hear it.”
“Using the Nandrians’ original plans and diagrams, and the spare parts they left behind on the Rangers’ platform, we’re building a control panel for the field generator that should match the one on Zulu. At first, those drawings were about as helpful as the manual Nagor had given us, but Beale and Oolalong think they’ve finally deciphered the alien symbols on the wiring schematics. If they’re right, and if the panel comes together without any further problems, and if the controls function as well as we hope they will—”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” grumbled Hagman.
“Yep,” said Gouryas.
Undeterred, Singh continued, “—we should be able to program the invisibility shield. Extending it to encompass the entire planet would not only conceal the Hub and Zulu, it would also create a blind where our own forces could lie in wait to ambush the Corvou ships.”
“I like the ambush part,” Townsend commented. “However, our purpose isn’t to avoid the confrontation with the enemy — it’s to stand them off here for as long as possible. If we hide the station too well, they may decide to take the war directly to Earth. That being said, having the element of surprise does give us a tactical advantage. All right. And what about the weapon you described to me earlier? I believe it involved using the molecular paintbrush to fatigue the metal of an enemy ship’s hull…?”
“Two problems with that,” Gouryas cut in as Singh dropped back onto his seat. “First, it would take three separate, perfect strikes on a fast-moving target, the first quite literally to paint it, the second to unpaint it, and the third to collapse the molecular latticework. And second, while we’ve been able to create the effect at close range on a small sample of hull material inside the station, we have no idea yet how to extend the range, or whether the metal used for Corvou ships would even be susceptible to such a weapon.”
“We do have a Corvou-built shuttle on board,” Hagman reminded them.
“Don’t even think about using Devil Bug for target practice!” Ruby warned from across the deck.
“You may change your mind when it comes down to a choice between us and that alien contraption,” Hagman returned hotly.
At that moment, the tube car door opened behind him, and Robert O’Malley stepped onto the deck. The youngest member of Holchuk’s cargo inspection team, O’Malley was also the designated caregiver of Yoko and her sister Akiko, aka the Überrats. He was in his mid-thirties but looked about half that age, making it difficult not to think of him as a kid.
Right now, the kid was grinning as though the war had already been won. “What can I do for you, boss?” said O’Malley as he strutted to an empty chair, turned it to face him, and straddled it as though mounting a moto.
Lydia watched, frowning, from the end of the filing cabinet partition. “Tell them what you found on the Marco Polo’s logs,” she ordered him.
“I had to revise about four and a half intervals’ worth of activity and utility records,” he replied over his shoulder. “Can you be more specific?”
“The alien ship, the one that could seal up Gates,” she said.
“Ah! Okay. The Marco Polo made some unauthorized side trips while in alien space. One of these excursions was to pick up a group of stranded aliens from a planet that no one was supposed to know existed. Once they were aboard, the Earth ship went to Thrygg to find a vessel that those aliens had apparently hidden there much earlier. Everything was very hush-hush. But here’s the thing: the Thryggian system had been sealed up in a pocket of space for over a year. The aliens on the Marco Polo used their own technology to create a Gate so they could get inside the pocket. Then they sealed the Gate from the other side so the Thryggians couldn’t use it to escape.”
“Alien technology,” Townsend repeated thoughtfully. “It’s not as though that’s a brand new concept for us. Which alien race are we talking about here?”
“They go by more than one name,” O’Malley told him. “But the group that went inside Thryggian space call themselves the Kularian brotherhood.”
More than one name? That wasn’t exactly a brand new concept either, Drew mused. Aloud, he said, “How hard would it be to contact this brotherhood?”
“Directly? Probably impossible,” O’Malley said. “However, there’s an indirect route we can take, since all those rescued aliens now owe the Marco Polo a favor. And, thanks to my brilliant doctoring of their intranet, the Marco Polo owes us one.”
It was perfect.
“Ruby!” Townsend called across the deck.
“Already on it, Chief. I’m resending the request for the Marco Polo to come back here and pick up Odysseus. Once they arrive, you can tell them the real reason we need them. That way, the Rangers don’t have to know what we’re about,” she assured him.
“Good!” Townsend turned his attention back to the group in front of him. “Now, Mr. Soaring Hawk,” he said, “thanks to your clever bargaining, we’re in possession of an enemy craft. You’ve been working on it for quite a while and must be familiar with at least some of the Corvou technology. Do you have any insights to share?”
“Just one, and you’re not going to like it,” Hawk replied. “I acquired Devil Bug as a long-term project. I was going to take my time figuring out how every system worked. In fact, all I managed to learn was that it couldn’t be done. Corvou engineering is damn near perfect. Every system is self-contained, inaccessible using any of the tools at my disposal, and apparently also self-repairing.
“Meanwhile, I knew Ruby was champing at the bit to fly her. So, I decided to focus on the one component I could work on because it hadn’t been finished yet — the propulsion system. I wish I could tell you something about Corvou propulsion systems. Unfortunately, I can’t, because the one on Devil Bug is a frankenstein of my own creation, using modified parts from Nandrian and Human technologies. And because I can’t get inside the console, it remains a mystery to me how the cockpit controls can even recognize my rebuild, let alone connect with it.”
“Adaptiveness must be a central principle of this technology,” Singh offered. “It allows for situations in which repairs might have to be made using non-Corvou materials. Quite brilliant, when you think about it. And more than a little frightening.”
Townsend had to agree. These cockroaches had transportation technology that was light years ahead of anything Humanity could produce. He didn’t want to imagine what their weapons technology must be like.
“What about the tools at my disposal?” Doctor Ktumba inquired evenly.
Eight people became instantly attentive.
“I think it’s past time for a thorough scientific analysis of this shuttle,” she continued. “Well, as thorough as possible, anyway. And I happen to have a laboratory full of hardware designed to do just that.”
“If you’re able to give me data on the composition of the outer hull, I can use it to set up a computer simulation,” Lydia chimed in. She’d returned to her station on the other side of the deck. “Virtual target practice. Maybe even a real time combat situation.”
“We can certainly try,” said Ktumba. Addressing Townsend, she added, “Since time is of the essence, I’ll want every crew member with a scientific degree to be available for this project.”
“Of course,” he said. It was never a good idea to argue with the Doc once she’d made up her mind about something.
“When the scientists are done with it, we may be able to use the shuttle for other strategic purposes,” Hawk continued.
“Yes!” Jason Smith’s face had lit up. “It would be perfect for covert reconnaissance. Or infiltration of the Corvou fleet. As a last ditch resort, we could even turn Devil Bug into a decoy mine — load it up with explosives, leave it dead in space at a distance from the station, and trigger the detonation remotely at just the right moment.” He was practically salivating.
“You do realize that we would have to requisition those explosives from Earth?” Gouryas put in drily. “Good luck getting that order filled.”
Even if they had the ordnance on hand, Townsend realized, Ruby wasn’t about to let them blow up her pet shuttle without a fight. He braced himself to hear an indignant howl from the other side of the filing cabinets. What reached his ears instead was Lydia’s anguished cry.
“Oh, no!” The distress in her voice pulled them all out of their chairs. “Dammit! I do not believe this!”
“What now?” Townsend demanded.
She raised troubled eyes to his face. “Devil Bug is gone. Odysseus took our ship instead of his own. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left the console, not even for a second, but once he was inside his vessel, I figured — never mind what I figured,” she snapped. “It was a stupid, stupid mistake! Drew, I’m so sorry!”
“So much for covert missions,” sighed Jason Smith.
“And for scientific analysis,” the Doc added disgustedly.
“Hey, it’s not all bad,” Hagman pointed out. “We still have his shuttle.”
Glaring at the frozen image of the landing deck on Lydia’s screen, Ruby muttered darkly, “This one I don’t mind using for target practice.”
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 542 Earth days.
The last time Drew had stepped through a docking portal onto a Ranger vessel, it had been to warn Captain Steve Bonelli to keep his men off Townsend’s turf. How times had changed!
Bonelli’s craft had been set up like a spaceborne conference room. This one more resembled one of the small liners that tooled around between the transfer points and the various hubs. It held about fifteen cushioned chairs, eight of them in four parallel rows facing the cockpit door, the rest backed up against the bulkheads on the other three sides of the cabin. The entire Zulu detachment would fit aboard this ship quite comfortably, in armor and carrying bulky gear. Drew wondered briefly about the third shuttle. Perhaps it was for carrying cargo and didn’t have any seating at all. Or maybe—
Rodrigues emerged from the cockpit, tugging at his jacket and pulling Townsend’s thoughts back to the here and now. The Ranger captain’s uniform looked better-pressed today than it had the last time they’d met in person, but the creases on his face were probably there to stay. He gestured to Townsend to take a seat, then lowered himself onto the one beside it.
“I gather you want to report a stolen vehicle,” Rodrigues remarked, the corners of his mouth twitching as he struggled and failed to keep a deadpan expression.
Townsend tried to stare disapprovingly at him and had to give up the effort as well. “Lydia told you?”
“When she contacted me to set up our meeting. She blames herself for the loss of Devil Bug. It didn’t take much persuasion on my part to get her to talk. So, what did the Nandrian have to say?”
“That we’re officially at war with the Corvou, and that this enemy is not to be taken lightly. He also promises that the Nandrians will stand with us, all forty Houses of them. They’re a powerful fighting force. However, in about a standard year, a huge fleet of ships full of giant cockroaches and armed with advanced alien weaponry will be attacking us from space. And once they’ve reduced the Hub and Zulu to dust, they’ll go straight to Earth and wipe out all Human life on the planet, from orbit. They’ve done it before, apparently, to other races who unwittingly insulted their deity, the Mother of All. The Great Council could have warned us but chose not to. In fact, it issued orders that Humans were to be kept ignorant about the Corvou.”
Rodrigues studied the deck for a moment, his frown lines deepening. Then he returned his gaze to Townsend’s face. “They wanted this to happen.”
“So it would appear. Unfortunately, all we can do about it right now is sound the alarm and get ready to hold the line, giving Earth as much time as possible to evacuate the population.”
“Abandon the planet? Why not defend it? Between Fleet Command and Space Installation Security, we’ve got a sizable armada of our own. We could even mount a preemptive strike on the Corvou home world to even the odds a little.”
“That would be like smacking a hornet’s nest with a stick. Not the brightest move if all you’ve got to protect yourself with is the stick. According to Agnosk, that’s the position we’re in right now — hugely outnumbered and fatally outgunned. The Nandrians should know. They’ve dealt with the Corvou before. Agnosk says that going to ground off-world gives Humanity its best chance to avoid total annihilation.”
Rodrigues paused to digest this. “I need to get word to Earth’s High Council as soon as possible. However they decide to go about it, they’ll need every minute of the coming standard year to prepare for the Corvou attack.”
“But first they’ll need to believe the warning and take the threat seriously.”
“What are you saying? That I have no credibility?”
“Think about it. Giant cockroaches from outer space? It has ‘hoax’ written all over it. And the warning will be coming from under the rug where all the dissidents and malcontents have been swept. When you told me you’d been promoted to detachment commander on Zulu, I gave you my condolences. Now you know why.”
The Ranger’s lips pursed as he dragged in and let out a long breath through his nose. “All right, then. Earth’s government might not believe us, but Earth Intelligence will. And the EIS has ways to ensure that the right people find out quickly what they need to know. That said, as the detachment commander on Zulu, I have a lot more credibility with the EIS than you do — no offense, Townsend, but you’ve been running cons on everyone and their uncle since the day you arrived here — so I’ll be the one to contact HQ. Besides, I’m connected a little closer to the top of the organization than you are.”
I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you, Drew thought, sorely tempted to speak the words aloud.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 532 Earth days.
Townsend sat at his desk, leaning on his elbows and staring morosely at the blank screen of his computer. After the excitement of the past several days, he was back in a lull, his mind and gut both churning as worrisome questions kept repeating on his brain like the garlic in one of Jensen’s tomato-based sauces.
One in particular wouldn’t quit gnawing at him: Why should they care?
Was he wrong to assume that anyone on his crew actually gave a damn about the world that had sent them into exile and then apparently forgotten about them, in some cases more than ten standard years ago?
After all, the longer one spent in space, the more alien the home planet became. The Stragori were living proof of that. For that matter, so was he. Without seasons to count, without a naturally created alternation of night and day, Drew had come to feel disconnected from the passage of time. How old was he now, in Earth years? Had he missed his own birthday? How close was Christmas? Wait — he had to stop and think about it. It was a small thing, but it bothered him.
And he’d only been out here a couple of years. It chilled him to imagine what the others must have gone through — especially Ruby, who had come aboard voluntarily twenty standard years earlier, and Holchuk, who had been forced to abandon his search for his missing daughter and leave Earth fourteen standard years ago. That was twenty-one Earth years, an unconscionably long time for any father not to know whether his child was alive or dead. Holchuk blamed the Relocation Authority, but Drew knew who the real villain was, and the knowledge made him all the more wary of revealing who he’d been working for when he’d arrived.
If the EIS hadn’t meddled in their lives, how many of the men and women currently on his crew manifest would be happily going about their business elsewhere? More to the point, how many were wishing that that was where they were right now — at home on Earth or on one of its colonies, blissfully unaware of recent events?
The hum of the tube car door interrupted Townsend’s gloomy contemplation as Max Karlov stepped onto the deck, wearing a purposeful expression. Karlov’s rugged face had healed without scars, but his artificial eye would always be a darker shade of blue than his natural one.
“I sent the request for assistance to Stragon, as you asked.”
“And?” Drew gestured to him to take a seat.
Karlov settled his large frame onto a chair on the other side of the station manager’s desk. “And my handlers have responded. They understand the urgency of the situation, but they need to confer with our government. Once the Directorate has reached a decision, they’ll let me know what it is. I have no idea when that will be, other than soon.” He paused, visibly choosing his next words. “Townsend, I meant what I said earlier about the Directorate being determined to preserve Humanity’s future. But you need to prepare yourself.”
“I know,” he said. “There’s a civil war brewing on Stragon, and nothing is for certain. Well, if they turn us down, at least I will have tried.”
“They’re not going to turn you down. They’ll do everything they can. But they may require something in return. Something that will permit them to continue helping Humanity.”
“Let me guess. Support for the moderates on Stragon? I can’t speak for Earth’s High Council, you know that. Daisy Hub is the extent of my influence.”
“You underestimate your power,” Karlov told him. “You have connections with people on Earth who can, shall we say, get in the way of the radicals who are trying to rally Humans to their cause…?”
Drew leaned back in his chair, alert to any sign the other man might be lying, before remarking offhandedly, “This is starting to sound like a negotiation. Do you already know what the Directorate’s answer will be?”
“No. I’m just aware of the situation on both our worlds and trying to think ahead. War is never a good thing, Townsend. That’s especially true of a civil war. If you can’t avoid it, the next best course of action is to shorten it. Having Humans in the front lines on Stragon isn’t going to accomplish that, but thwarting the radical faction’s recruitment efforts on Earth just might.”
“And what about our war with the Corvou?”
Karlov shrugged. “Unfortunately, it will have to be fought. The only way to shorten it will be for one side to win it quickly. Since the entire Corvou hive is dedicated to the extinction of Humanity, the opposite has to be true as well. Surrender won’t be an option, for either of you. Will the Directorate involve itself openly in a war to the death of an entire race? I honestly cannot tell you that. As you said earlier, neither one of us can speak for our respective planetary governments. However,” he added, squaring his shoulders and expanding his chest, “as I promised you earlier, I will stand beside you in battle and ensure that you survive. And, if you’re safe and ask me to, I’ll willingly risk my life to preserve Daisy Hub.”
He made an impressive soldier, Drew had to admit, but Karlov wasn’t really a spy. He’d been too easily outed, for one thing, and he’d cracked wide open under interrogation. It had made Townsend suspect that he was giving them disinformation. However, O’Malley was looking into everything the Stragori had said; and from what the ratkeeper had managed to confirm so far, it was apparently the truth.
Curious, Townsend asked, “Why did they send you to steal Yoko, Karlov? Why not a trained covert operative?”
The other man met his steady gaze and replied, “They know I’m a moderate, and they needed someone they could trust. Too many of our agents are either turning out to be radicals or refusing to declare for either side. Besides, I volunteered for the mission.”
Now Drew was really curious. “And why would you do that?”
“Quite honestly, to have an adventure.” He leaned forward confidentially. “From my tenth birthday on, I’ve been either training or working as a soldier. Physical workouts, military history, combat strategies, battle tech, codes and ciphers — that’s all I’ve known and all I’ve done, for practically my entire life. Defensive forces are permanently stationed on and around Stragon, but all our records indicate that no one has ever tried to attack us. In fact, they’ve never even paid us much notice. After fifty-five years of uneventful guard duty, I was more than ready for a change. When the opportunity arose to go off-world, I grabbed it.”
So, they’d all been right about Karlov, Drew mused as he watched the Stragori step into a tube car. He probably had extraordinary longevity, as the Doc had maintained; he had grown to maturity in a narrow, sheltered environment, as DeVries had suggested; and his delight at learning how a water reclamation system worked, as noted by Tannis Walker, had been genuine. On Daisy Hub, Karlov was exploring new interests and discovering unsuspected talents — in particular, a flair for baking. His spiced shortbread cookies had become a staple item on Fritz Jensen’s snack counter.
Packed into a sturdy metal container, they would make a great gift for the Directorate at Christmas, Drew decided.