Death Never Leaves a Calling Card Page 7

  Walt nodded, “This is a great way to immediately break up their formations.”

  Emily looked at Walt, “Hey, magic fingers, get over here and write the orders. We need to do this quickly.”

  Randy smiled, “Have the scouts form up directly in front of the Sword. They’ll have no clue what we’re planning.” Walt nodded as his fingers flew on the keyboard.

  Sam watched as the Sword moved closer to the Tronan formation and saw the Scouts moving into a massed formation in front of the ship, “What is he doing?!”

  Jek looked at Sam, “He’s developing tactics. This current one is a doozy.”

  “But…”

  “He knows about the danger of being near the blasts, Sam. He knows what he’s doing.” Jek closed his eyes and said, “Stop the ship.” Rangel pulled the booster levers back and Jek said, “They’re hesitating because of the Senior Ship Leaders that came on board.”

  Acreb smiled, “Then let’s remove that concern.” He lifted the communicator and said, “The Senior Ship Directors, who came to meet with me attempted to assassinate me. They committed treason and I killed them myself. I want another three-hundred Senior Ship Directors to come meet with me.”

  • • •

  The Senor Ship Director pressed his communicator, “They failed. Prepare to attack in ten seconds.”

  “Do you think we can make it to that ship before it flees?”

  “It would have to turn around and we’ll be on it before it could.”

  “What about those small ships in front of it?”

  “They’re nothing. Activate the blaster barrage and go to full speed in ten-seconds!”

  • • •

  Jek looked at Acreb, “They’re attacking in six-seconds.”

  Acreb moved the communicator close to his mouth and yelled as the blaster barrages began, “ALL SHIPS IN MY FLEETS WILL REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE AND WITNESS WHAT HAPPENS TO TRAITORS. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU AND WANT YOU TO DIE!”

  He sat back and looked at Jek, “They’re following your orders. I think the sudden attack by the Seniors has surprised them and there’s no one giving orders.”

  “I’m surprised the Seniors haven’t ordered them in.”

  Lydia lowered her shoulders, “I stopped their communications right after Acreb gave his orders, Admiral.”

  Sam smiled, “Shelly taught you well.” Lydia smiled as her face turned red.

  • • •

  Randy saw the blaster barrage and said calmly, “First Wave launch.” Twelve-hundred and fifty scouts went to full boosters and accelerated to 33 hundred miles an hour. They were on a single plane as they roared into the oncoming Tronan Warships.

  • • •

  One of the Ship Directors watching the attack stared at his huge wall monitor and stood up, “Those tiny ships stand no chance!” A moment later, the attacking Tronan Warships went up in a massive blast. A few moments later, the small ships emerged from the horrendous explosions and whipped around to go over the top. The Ship Director’s eyes were wide open as another line of the tiny ships moved forward as the massive explosions dissipated. There were more explosions as the second line of tiny ships came roaring out of the carnage but it was clear all thousand warships were demolished. The explosions slowly blew away and the Tronan Fleets were silent at what they had witnessed.

  Acreb lifted the communicator and said, “All of you are experiencing fear now. You’re feeling what I’ve been going through since I allowed you to be trapped in this star system. Here is the offer I’m going to make. I am going to share a conversation I had with a new Prime Director that I have sworn to obey. After you listen to it, I’ll tell you what it means.” Acreb nodded and Lydia sent out the recording of Acree confronting Acreb in their original meeting.

  Acreb waited until the recording ended and immediately said, “I know you have questions. But hold them. Your decision is simple. You can accept this offer to join my surviving crews on this new planet, or you can choose death; there is no other option. Even if we somehow managed to get back to our civilization, the Prime Director would execute all of us to teach what failure leads to. If you choose to stay here, you will die of starvation. I will not force any of you to accept this alternative. I will allow you to remain here. If you choose to die quickly and not endure the ravages of starvation, then I’ll have these small ships kill you quickly. This planet has brought me more happiness than any other time in my life. I want to share it with you. Now, you must decide. Any of you that choose not to accept my new Prime Director will move out of formation now. Those of you who will make the pledge, will follow me to our new home.”

  One ship started to move but instantly stopped and moved back into formation. Acreb looked at Jek, “That was one of the three-undecided. His bridge crew just executed him.”

  Acreb smiled. It appeared the crew was better than their commander. He waited an additional thirty-minutes and said, “Everyone will now make the pledge.” Acreb crossed his arms on his chest and began speaking.

  Sam looked at Jek and saw tears. Jek thought to him, “They are all taking it. This is what true loyalty looks like and these beings are real warriors.”

  Sam lowered his head and saw the filament come rushing in from the distant intersection. He looked at Angel and saw her tears. She looked at him and then went into his arms. She could hear them as well.

  • • •

  Four weeks later, the last of the Tronan crews landed on the planet. Sam had five giant transports come in to make the move happen smoothly; it would have taken months without them. He also ordered fifteen of the old scouts to the planet. Their stardrives were removed but their blasters and force fields would be critical in protecting the new colonists until they learned how to deal with the giant carnivores. Acree was on the Sword’s bridge and smiled as the last shuttle arrived on the planet. “Thank you.”

  “Make something special here, Acree.”

  “It already is, Sam. We will become what we always should have been.” Sam nodded and Acree shocked him with his next statement. “I am no longer the Prime Director.”

  “We will not accept any one else!!”

  “I’ve met with my Senior Directors and I am now the Senior Fleet Director. It carries the same authority as the Prime Director. I have the Senior Title on our planet. The Council voted and they were unanimous in choosing you to be the Prime Director.”

  “WHAT?!”

  “We all know that it was you that made it possible for us to be here. And before you decline the title, there might come a time where you will need us to assist you against our former civilization. You know how we function and we will follow your orders to the death. When the Evil Ones come here, they will kill us given the opportunity. You know I’m right.”

  “But they can’t get here without a filament.”

  Acreb has looked at the numbers you’ll be facing and he says that transporting your small ships is going to be a huge problem; is he right?” Sam was silent and Acree smiled, “I think you’re starting to see it. Our ships are five-miles long and our landing bays are massive. We will assist you in the coming war, if you trust us.”

  “But you’ll be fighting your own species?”

  “They may be the same species but they are not the same people. They are monsters and the universe will be better without them in it.”

  Sam sighed, “You’re right about the transports. I’ve learned that we’ll have eight-hundred-thousand scouts completed before they invade. We’re way ahead of schedule on building the scouts. We only have four Dragon Transports and the remaining transports can only handle twenty-thousand scouts. Keeping them provisioned is where the real problem lies.”

  Acree smiled, “Acreb tells me that you put yourself at risk carrying that many scouts in one ship.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, he says that after watching them in action that it would be foolish to have more than ten-thousand on each of your transports.”

  Sam stared at Acree a
nd then said, “Go on.”

  “He is of the opinion that you will have to attack on numerous fronts and that landing operations to keep your small ships armed can get out of hand if you have more than ten-thousand small ships on a transport. They will go through their arms at an incredible rate and your transports will be at risk attempting to rearm more than that.”

  “Acreb sounds like he knows a lot more than I suspected.”

  “He’s a Senior Fleet Director. War is all he’s ever known and he is wise in the ways of war.”

  Sam sighed, “I confess that I can use your ships but who will command them and how can I know your chosen crews can be trusted?”

  “I’ll command them, Sam”

  Acree and Sam turned and Jek smiled, “Jel and I will make sure everyone selected to crew the ships can be trusted; I admire who they are and what they’ve become. I’ll be fighting with true warriors.”

  “Are you sure about this, Jek?”

  “Acree is right. We need their help.”

  Sam looked at Angel and saw her smiling, “What?”

  “I had a vision a year ago; Jek was on the bridge of a Tronan Warship slouching in his chair. I just assumed it was a bad dream.” Sam laughed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Angel, seeing him slouching in a chair should have told you it was true.”

  They turned and looked at Jek slouching in his chair. He looked at them and said, “WHAT?”

  They laughed and Sam said, “I’m going to need seventy-five of your ships to convert to transports. We are going to leave the filament in place until the invasion starts; at that time, we’ll have to remove it to force them to take a longer route.”

  Acree nodded, “The initial crews will be selected from my crew and the crews that came with Acreb. All of us have taken the pledge and will follow your orders.”

  “Can you get the ships ready to move quickly?”

  “I’ll need transportation out to where they’re located.”

  “Send me enough crewmen to move one of them. It can be used to move the others. And thank Acreb for his suggestion.”

  Jek looked up, “Already done, Sam.”

  “Jek, get those ships to Romania quickly.” Jek nodded and Sam hugged Acree, “I really don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t need to say anything. Just stop them.”

  “You just made the odds better.”

  Chapter Six

  Tam stared at the forward viewport and was amazed at the marvel of traveling on a filament. This particular filament was the second largest filament he had ever been in and it was moving at incredible speed. This one had to originate in a giant black hole somewhere in Tronan Space and who knows how far it traveled before it connected with a similar sized black hole across the universe.

  He wondered if the two black holes shared something else. The giant filament flowed out and then a return flow came back. Of course, that was true of all filaments but it was these monsters that moved the fastest. They connected galaxies and made travel between them possible.

  He leaned back and considered that it was possible to travel to a distant galaxy faster than on the smaller filaments that connected the individual stars inside those galaxies. Traveling across the Milky Way Galaxy took longer than traveling to Tronan Space. Traveling across the Milky Way required changing filaments and going through numerous intersections before arriving at your destination.

  “Tam?”

  “Yeah, Zek.”

  “Are you comfortable with the new communication system?”

  “What has you bothered?”

  “Well, I just don’t see how our scouts can communicate with us without being detected. If we can receive their messages, the Tronan ought to be able to detect them. Plus, how is it possible to communicate all the way back to Fleet across the universe?”

  “I don’t know which engineer developed this new system, Zek. I actually think it was discovered accidently.”

  “I haven’t been cleared to see all of the data on the new system.”

  Tam rolled his eyes, “Yes, you have! You’re just too lazy to read all of it.”

  Zek smiled, “Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I’m just not into technical manuals.”

  Tam sighed, “It is tedious to get through.”

  “So, tell me how it works. You’re the technical whiz in this outfit. It might make this mission less boring.”

  Tam turned his chair around and looked at Zek, “You know the filaments are a form of energy, right?” Zek nodded. “And their motion through under space develops…for lack of a better term, noise.”

  “If you mean a specific frequency, I’ve listened to it many times. It’s almost like listening to waves crashing on a beach. I recorded it and play it over earplugs to go to sleep.”

  Tam smiled, “Now that’s a good idea.” He paused and said, “Our old system uses the filaments to carry our communications in that energy; it’s the only way to communicate with distant ships and locations faster than light.” Zek nodded. “We would send a high-powered frequency with our messages and they could be received at a distant location. The more power used to boost the frequency, the further they would reach.”

  “But there was a limit to how far they would go.”

  Tam shrugged, “That’s true. The only way to really extend the range was to use a squeal-burst with all the power a reactor could pour into it.”

  “But that made them detectable.”

  “That’s true. They’d be seen by pretty much every civilization connected to the filaments. However, they were heavily encrypted, extremely short, and almost impossible to decipher,” Tam replied.

  “So why did we go to a new system.”

  “Because the closer you are to the source of the burst, the higher power you would detect. If we used that system in Tronan Space, they would know it had to originate close to them. That’s why we’ve depended on your species and your telepathic talents to be our main communication channels when we’ve sent ships into their Empire.”

  Tam paused and said, “Fleet also believes that the Tronan have heard our bursts in the past and probably has them recorded.”

  Zek nodded, “And no encryption is perfect; they can be broken.”

  Tam nodded, “That has Fleet really worried. The original scouts that went to their space only broadcast a frequency without any dialogue. The second one sent out told the scouts attacking the Tronan Communication Line to attack in thirty-seconds. All of our other squeal bursts in our space did not have the power to reach Tronan Space. Fleet worries about that burst with an attack warning.”

  “It’s also been a real pain in the patookus to have to move back and forth to report any findings,” Zek added.

  Travis looked at Zek for a moment and then said, “Patookus?”

  “You know what it means.”

  Tam nodded, “Anyway, the Engineer on Romania, who stumbled on the new system, was communicating with a new construction site on Bellingham. He was asking some questions when the filament at Bellingham was removed. “Both he and the Engineer he was speaking with shouted at the loud noise at the same moment.”

  Zek shook his head slightly, “How is that possible? There is always a slight delay over that distance.”

  Tam nodded, “You’re right. But the sound of that filament’s removal was instantly heard by both, who were separated by millions of light years. They finished their conversation later but the Engineer on Romania continued to be bothered by what happened.

  He eventually decided to perform an experiment. He built an emitter that sent out a signal on the exact frequency of the noise in the filaments. He had the Engineer on Bellingham build a receiver to listen to the noise in the filament and told him to let him know if he could hear anything different.”

  “What happened?”

  “He heard it instantly. They then built a transmitter and receiver that could receive that frequency and respond to it. They discovered that there was no time d
elay, it was instantaneous. It took another month of experimentation but they found that the noise being made by the filaments was the same everywhere in the universe.”

  “How is that possible?” Zek asked.

  “How are the filaments possible? We’re not close to understanding how they operate but one of the filament’s properties is that all the filaments in the universe appear to be using the same energy simultaneously. The noise in Tronan Space is the same as the noise in our space.”

  Zek stared at Tam as he waited for him to think about it. Finally, he said, “So, if noise is made in our sector, that noise is also in the Tronan Sector at the same moment.”

  Tam smiled, “It’s everywhere in the universe, where filaments exist, at the same moment.”

  Zek nodded and thought about the concept, “So how do you make noise in the filaments that won’t be detected?”

  “Think about normal radio-waves. They are broadcast in an environment where literally millions of other waves are moving through a planet’s atmosphere. How are they separated out?”

  “Usually they have a different frequency?” Zek replied.

  Tam nodded, “Or…”

  “They have a different wave-length.”

  “Exactly. The frequency will have to match the frequency of the filament’s noise but the wave-length can vary. By controlling the wave-lengths, a conversation can be sent inside the noise.”

  “And since the sender and receiver are sending and receiving at the same time…” Zek replied.

  “The conversation happens faster than it can be detected.”

  “What prevents the wave-length from being detected, Tam?”

  Tam sighed heavily and shook his head, “The answer to that question leaves the technology realm and goes into the realm of science. It’s beyond my understanding. However, I was told by the trainer, who taught me how to use the system that the simplest explanation is…” Tam paused.

  “What?”

  “That the receiver and transmitter are essentially next to each other in the filaments. The wave-length travels no distance.”