Gibraltar Stars Read online

  It had taken six months after the briefing in Toronto to plan and prepare for the assault, a carefully balanced effort to fulfill several strategic objectives simultaneously.

  The first was to scare hell out of the Broa. They’d had things their own way for so long that they could scarcely imagine anything else. The shock of simultaneously losing contact with Planet X and their regional capitals would discompose them. The shock should register nine on their psychological Richter scale.

  The Sovereignty was a classic authoritarian pyramid of power. As such, it was uniquely suited for this kind of creative destruction. Local satraps who lost contact with their bosses would not know how to respond. Rather than risk doing the wrong thing, they would likely do nothing at all.

  The attack would go far in wrecking the Broan Navy. Unlike the local rulers, they would spring into action as soon as they lost contact with headquarters. Ship commanders who found themselves in systems with functioning stargates would likely commandeer them for single-ended jumps to the home world or nearest sector capital.

  Their efforts would further disrupt commerce. Upon arrival, they would discover the mass bombardment they feared had not taken place. They would also be trapped for the duration in a system with no operative stargates.

  The second objective of the assault was to sever the enemy’s command-and-control nodes in as many places as possible, and to make sure they stayed severed. This was to be accomplished by leaving ships in hiding in the most important systems, ships that would let fly at any replacement gate as soon as it emitted its first gravity wave. No one knew how many gates the pseudo-simians held in reserve, but the guardians were well stocked with SMs. They were unlikely to run short before being relieved at the end of their six-month tour.

  For lesser systems, the strategy was simple smash-and-run. Individual cruisers and destroyers would drop sublight, destroy all the gates in a system and move on. As impressive as their strikes were, however, the mighty blastships, cruisers and destroyers were not the main show. In this phase of the war, they were supporting players.

  #

  “Lancer’s back, Captain,” Xavier’s communicator announced as a ship icon appeared on the forward bridge display.

  “Open a channel,” Mark ordered.

  “Comm laser open, Captain.”

  On Mark’s screen, the grinning features of Captain William Lonegan appeared.

  “I take it you were successful, Bill,” Mark said to the officer who had led the expedition to steal the stargate.

  Lonegan nodded. “We paid them back for what they did to Vrathalatar, all right. Our SM blew that gate to atoms. Phase One, successfully completed.”

  “Then it’s our turn. Follow us in.”

  “We’ve got your back, Xavier.”

  Mark switched off the comm channel, and turned his attention to the bridge of his own ship. “All right, people. Prepare to jump. One minute warning. Seal all suits and airtight hatches.”

  Around him, alarms sounded, along with a recorded warning to the crew. “Astrogator, take us in. Watch you don’t overshoot the limit. I’ve already been on one ballistic joy ride into the heart of a Broan system. I don’t want another.”

  “We’ll break out well short of where we strain the generators, Captain. Ten seconds… five… four… three… two… one… Jump!”

  The viewscreen flashed black and cleared a few tenths-of-a-second later. In front of them lay a yellow disk whose face was pockmarked with sunspots. The system’s planets began popping up on the viewscreen. It helped that they already knew the orientation of the ecliptic.

  “Engines to power,” he ordered the astrogator.

  There was a quiet shudder through the ship as the normal space generators came online. A gentle hand pushed everyone into their couches as acceleration built slowly to one standard gravity.

  They could have used higher acceleration, but they didn’t want their approach to the inner system to look like an attack run.

  #

  Six months earlier, upon their return to Brinks Base from Earth, Admiral Landon made good his promise. He assigned Mark command of Xavier del Bac, a Q-ship with a list of uneventful spy missions to its credit. The Admiral’s first order was to take Xavier to Nemesis to have it modified for its new mission.

  Upon hearing of it, Lisa demanded an audience with the admiral, where she asked to be assigned to Mark’s ship, as a cook, if necessary.

  “Damn it, Lisa, we need you here to put together our spiel in Broan trade talk! Is this about Susan Ahrendt?”

  Lisa looked surprised. “Susan? What about her?”

  “I’ve assigned her to Mark’s ship.”

  “I know that,” Lisa answered, irritation in her voice. “Is that why you think I’m here?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course not. Susan and I are friends. Besides, I trust my husband.”

  “Then why are you making this ridiculous demand?”

  Lisa frowned. “Admiral, I don’t ever want to go through what I experienced at Sabator again. I promised Mark that if either of us is destined to die in this war, we will die together.”

  “He’s not going to die en route to Nemesis,” Landon replied. “It’s a milk run. You are more likely to get food poisoning eating in the base commissary.”

  She set her jaw and looked stubborn.

  “Look,” Landon said, taking one last approach before he pulled rank on her, “I promise that you and Mark will serve together when the shooting starts. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said in a voice that reminded him of a little girl. Despite her look of contrition, he suspected that she wasn’t sorry at all.

  Mark departed for Nemesis on schedule and Lisa joined the Admiral’s staff as alien-provocateur-in-chief.

  Being captain of a ship involved a lot more than merely taking the salutes of subordinates. There were a thousand details to be decided while his ship was overhauled and its weapons and communications suites upgraded. Also, the new stardrive generator detector was added to make it easy to find their brethren after breakout. The yard also installed three widely separated nuclear self-destruct charges. They were taking no chance of a recurrence of what had happened at Sabator.

  While Mark was at Nemesis, he watched in amazement as ships dropped sublight just beyond the cold worlds. It seemed that every starship in human space was being ordered Beyond the Crab. It took three months to complete work on Xavier, after which it was a happy crew that returned to Brinks Base. Mark and Lisa’s reunion, as usual, was worth the wait.

  #

  Five days after entering the system of the yellow star, Lisa Rykand lay strapped into her station in the darkened sensor compartment, listening to intercepts. The locals seemed mystified and alarmed at the sudden explosion of their stargate. They were not, however, panicked.

  As Xavier fell ever deeper into the star’s gravity well and ever more distant from the safety of the critical limit, the Q-Ship remained on full alert. Sensors were at full gain and the SM launchers were “weapons hot.”

  Two days previous, they had “turned over” and were now decelerating to intrasystem velocity. Their orbit did not take them directly toward the inhabited planet. To do so would have looked like an attack. Rather, they would pass outboard, coming no closer than four times the distance from Earth to Luna at perigee.

  Lisa was startled from her concentration by a beep in her ear. She turned her head to see Mark’s smiling features staring out of a screen at her. From the out-of-focus background, he was on the bridge.

  “A deci-credit for your thoughts, my love.”

  “I was just thinking that someone promised to come to bed early last night, but didn’t make it until mid-watch. What were you doing?”

  “What else? Plotting against the Broa. Susan Ahrendt and her crew were doing a final checkout of our cargo and I had to play the unflappable captain on the bridge while they tracked down a glitch in the power system. I was too keyed up to sleep a
nyway.”

  Lisa arched an eyebrow. “Susan kept you up all night? The Admiral warned me about that back at Brinks.”

  Ignoring her jibe, Mark asked, “Are you ready for your big performance?”

  “As ready as I will ever be. I’ve been eavesdropping. Where are we?”

  “Just coming up on one light-minute out. They’re lighting us up with everything they can project, so they know we are coming.”

  Lisa nodded. “That’s what I have been listening to. They’re worried we’re going to bombard them, but they haven’t anything that can reach us. What about the sled?”

  “Hooked up to the launch track in Cargo Bay Two. We’ll launch as soon as you give the word.”

  “How long do I have before I go on?”

  “Fifteen minutes. We’ve got the high gain antenna erected so we’ll be able to overpower just about everyone else in the system.”

  “All right. Give me time to get myself composed.”

  “Take all you need. This is the first time anyone’s tried this. We’ll start recording in ten minutes. Try not to swear. The scientists at Strategies and Intentions might be offended.”

  Lisa responded with a well-chosen word not intended for posterity.

  Mark blew her a kiss and signed off. Having been married for most of a decade, he knew when his wife was frightened. In this case, it was stage fright. If she flubbed her lines, the entire human race would be witness to it for as long as the race existed.

  #

  Fifteen minutes later, Lisa keyed her microphone, and in her best Broan trade language, said:

  “Klys’kra’t Space Control. This is Terrestrial Space Navy Ship Xavier del Bac. Please respond.”

  She waited two minutes to give the signal time to get to the half-lighted crescent on the screen. When there was no answer, she issued the message again. She had barely finished when her screen lit up to show an alien countenance.

  For reasons both scientific and mysterious, most intelligent beings are bipeds. Form follows function in nature, and evolution always selects for the minimum structure that will serve a given purpose.

  The being that stared out at her was not a biped. In fact, it looked a little like a squid on a fence post. Its reptilian skin gave a hint to its aquatic origins, while a bullet-shaped head supported a crown of six orbs the thing used to see. Six tentacles erupted from about where its neck should have been. Lisa was unable to see the three legs on which it supported itself. She didn’t need to. She had been here before. The sight of a Voldar’ik, an inhabitant of the water world of Klys’kra’t, was old news.

  This was the system where humanity first met aliens other than Sar-Say.

  “What ship and what business?” a mechanically-generated voice asked in perfect trade Broan. The being, who lacked a face, and thus, a facial expression, sat motionless waiting for a reply across a two-minute round trip through space.

  “We are a warship of the Terrestrial Space Navy. We are the sworn enemy of the Broa and are here to free you from their bondage. To that end, we destroyed your stargate. I wish to speak to your planetary leaders. Put me through immediately.”

  It would have been more dramatic if the Voldar’ik, upon hearing her ultimatum, reacted in surprise, or shock, or possibly, broken out laughing. It did none of these. For ten long minutes, it sat centered in the viewscreen, acting like the fence post it resembled.

  At the end of that time, the screen changed to show three of the Voldar’ik standing in a cluster. The beings were not equipped to sit.

  “We are the current planetary authorities. What is it that you want?”

  Lisa went through her spiel once more. She finished with, “We want to help you win free of the Broa.”

  “What insanity is this?” The actual words were brain… malfunction… identify!, but the linguistic computer was good enough to render the demand idiomatically.

  “We are neither insane nor unintelligent. The Broa have used the stargates to keep you prisoner for far too long. We intend to free you if you will allow us.”

  This time when the answer came back, it was a simple interrogative. “How?”

  We have a technology that bypasses stargates. Our ships fly where they will, with no need to ask permission of anyone. We will share this technology with you if you will agree to join our war against the Broa.”

  “How will you share this device?”

  “We are carrying four working devices aboard this ship. They can be installed in your own ships to drive them faster than light. We also provide complete information concerning the technology to allow you to build more of the devices. No stargates are required. Will you accept this gift?

  “What is your price in value for this gift?”

  “I told you. We ask that you join us in our fight for your freedom.”

  There was a long pause again, longer than the communications delay warranted. Finally, one of the Voldar’ik said, “If you wish to give us a gift, we will accept.”

  “Damned diplomat,” Lisa muttered under her breath in Standard. To the screen she said (in Broan): “Very well. We ask that you aid us in destroying their stargates. You don’t have to, of course. However, consider that by accepting our gift, you are automatically making yourselves enemies of the Broa.”

  Two minutes went by. “We understand.”

  “The gift will come to you. Do not be afraid. It will swing wide of your planet and take up orbit ten diameters in front of your world. You may inspect the gift and retrieve it when you have confirmed it is safe.”

  Lisa switched her comm to Engineering. Susan Ahrendt appeared on her screen.

  “Is the sled ready to go?”

  Her query was answered by a lopsided smile that relayed far more than the ex-Trojan Horse payload specialist’s words.

  “Ready to launch, Lisa.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Susan?”

  “More than the last time, that’s for sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell the Captain we’re ready. Stand by.”

  Ten minutes later, a sled with four shipping containers containing stardrive generators launched. An orbit-to-orbit transfer engine came alive and began steering the cargo toward Klys’kra’t.

  #

  Dos-Val was awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of the communicator tone. Groping for the instrument, he held it up to his snout to discover the angry visage of the Prime Councilor.

  “Yes, Councilor, how may I help you?”

  “The stargates have been destroyed!” Zel-Sen said without preamble.

  “Destroyed? How?”

  “How do you think?”

  “The bipeds’ weapon.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  “The same. The reports were staggered as they came in, but it turns out that was merely speed-of-light delay. So far as we can determine, they were each destroyed in the same heart beat.”

  Dos-Val’s mind raced. The home world was the best defended planet in Civilization. All around Faalta, asteroids had been hollowed out over a great-gross of cycles to serve as armored fortresses. Sensor nets ringed the star out to beyond the orbit of the outermost world. The approaches to Faalta were through three other star systems, a fact that appeared in no database available to subservients. Each of the gateway systems was militarized nearly as much as the home star.

  The defenses that had been built at such a great cost were not designed to defend against an attack by subservients. Such a thing was unthinkable. Rather, they had been erected as a bulwark against civil war should clan tensions ever cause a rupture of Civilization. Any dissident faction who attacked via stargate or single-ended jump would find themselves suddenly in the midst of a swarm of enraged pelen.

  How could the bipeds have gotten close enough to destroy the stargates without being detected? Whatever magic they had performed had rendered the whole of Civilization defenseless. The thought no more occurred to him than it was pushed aside by an even more frightening one.

  Ssa
sfal isolated without stargates? How would they live? The freighters would stop bringing in food and all manner of goods required to keep Valar alive.

  An ancient fear suddenly formed. Although Ssasfal was home to the Race, there were more servants on the planet than Broa. Many of the subservients were carnivorous. When the food ran low, would they find another source of nourishment, much as the mawmouths and other beasts of the jungle floor once fed on his ancestors?

  “What are we to do, Councilor?” he stammered as the last of sleep was banished into the darkness.

  “You are the philosopher. You tell me. What of the Institute’s experiment with coordinate transformation?”

  “The prototype engine is complete and undergoing final test. Gor-Dek plans to send the ship in which he installed the generator to the edge of the system for the first flight experiment within a demicycle.”

  “He must do that tomorrow. I have ordered the replacement gates lofted immediately to regain communication.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Twelve rotations. I am not sure how long those gates will last.”

  “Do you think the bipeds are still lurking in the system?”

  “What would you do in their place?”

  Dos-Val thought about it. It made sense. Their tactic was to isolate Ssasfal and probably every other capital in Civilization. With Those Who Rule incommunicado, there would be no one to organize a proper defense.

  “How fast can Gor-Dek build more of these infernal engines?”

  “Councilor?”

  “If we cannot reestablish our stargate links to our gateway systems, we are going to need coordinate transformation ships to issue orders. How fast can the Institute produce the engines to install in existing craft?”

  “I don’t think they can. They have the knowledge, but all of the parts are imported from manufacturing worlds. The time required to obtain components is the reason it has taken so long to build the prototype. With the gates destroyed, we are cut off from our sources of supply.”

  “There must be something we can do,” Zel-Sen shouted.

  “I agree, Councilor,” Dos-Val said, attempting to mollify him. “I just don’t know what at the moment.”