McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS Read online

  The only other thing visible against the backdrop of space was the Crab Nebula. The ghostly apparition covered half the sky, with the supernova remnant clearly visible at its center. Some claimed to be able to see the remnant actually pulsate… unlikely, since the neutron star at its center rotated 30 times each second.

  “How can something so ugly be beautiful at the same time?” Lisa Rykand asked her husband as the two of them cuddled on their too-narrow bed and watched Sutton grow ever larger on their cabin screen.

  “Cognitive dissonance,” he replied. “We were out too long this time.”

  “Well, we made it home and we’ll have thirty days before we have to go out again.”

  He groaned. “Don’t remind me! Let’s live in the present for awhile. I wonder what new amusements they’ve set up since we’ve been gone?”

  “I’m sure the recreation center has the usual array of well-thumbed playing cards and chess sets missing no more than a piece or two. Then, of course, there’s the booze.”

  “There is that,” he agreed.

  Space Navy regulations were very specific when it came to being intoxicated on duty… specific and draconian. When the art of distillation was as easy as hooking up a plastic tube to the nearest vacuum spigot, the powers-that-be controlled drunkenness in the same way the British Navy had once handled the problem. They became the sole authorized distributor of alcohol.

  Daedalus had been out three full months this trip. Their routine was the same as on every other voyage. They would sneak into the traffic flow in some Broan system, and then jump from gate to gate to gate until they ran out of recording space in the computer.

  And so, in addition to Broan traffic of all sorts, there were a dozen or so human craft traversing the stargate network at any given time. By pretending to be locals, they could survey star systems faster than more surreptitious methods allowed. Even so, they were not getting the job done quickly enough.

  The problem was that the Broan domain was too damned large! The human fleet, operating at the end of a year-long supply line, could easily spend several lifetimes poking around on the fringes of enemy star systems. And the more they did so, the more likely that they would be detected, or worse, one of them would be captured.

  It was a scenario that kept the Q-ship crews on edge the whole time they were in Broan space… and kept their Captains’ hands never far from the self-destruct switch wired to a small nuke welded to the ship’s keel.

  Mark Rykand and his wife snuggled together and watched the approach to Sutton parking orbit. Since the moon was airless, ships could orbit close to the surface; so close, in fact, that it sometimes looked as though they would clip the tops of the moon’s Alpine-size mountains.

  As Daedalus used a staccato burst of attitude control jets to slide into its assigned orbital slot, the view shifted. A large spherical shape lay at the center of the screen. It floated stationary while Sutton’s surface swept past in a blur of motion behind it. The big freighter wore a ring of silver around its hull, giving it the look of a bald man with a hat perched at a jaunty angle.

  “What the hell is that?” Mark asked.

  Lisa was quiet for a few seconds, and then laughed.

  “It’s a stargate!”

  “So it is!” Mark exclaimed. “They actually snagged one while we were gone!”

  #

  One thing you had to say about the Space Navy, once a ship returned from a long, arduous patrol, they wasted no time in emptying it out. Save for a minimum watch on the bridge and in the engine spaces, the rest of the crew crowded into the three ground-to-orbit boats that arrived to take them down to Sutton.

  Mark and Lisa managed to squirm into one of the bare acceleration shelves on the third transport along with two space bags.

  “Happy, Darling?” she asked as she snuggled closer and gave him a brief kiss on the lips.

  “Ecstatic,” he replied. “Somehow this canned air smells fresher than our canned air, don’t you think?”

  “I do.”

  There was nothing to see as the boat’s retro engines fired and they dropped from low orbit into lower orbit, en route to the main spaceport on Sutton’s surface. The boats were built for cargo, not sightseeing.

  They listened intently to the quiet cacophony of noises as gravity returned for the first time in months. It wasn’t much gravity. Sutton was larger than Luna, with one-quarter of Earth’s pull. Still, it seemed like a lot for muscles used to microgravity.

  Then there was a long muted roar from the engines, the sound of fuel pumps somewhere nearby flooding them with reaction mass, and various subdued conversations as crewmates spoke urgently about what they were going to do when they “hit dirt.”

  The short flight was over more quickly than Mark remembered from previous mission debarkations. Apparently, the orbital mechanics were more favorable than usual, or perhaps he had just been more anxious the previous times.

  Whatever else one might say about whoever was flying this particular space truck, he knew his business. The landing was so soft that it took a moment for Mark to realize they were down. Only the fact that the engines went suddenly quiet, but the gravity remained, told him that they had Sutton firma beneath them.

  “I guess we’re here,” Mark said, struggling to undo the chest strap that had restrained him while Lisa did the same. They then slid off the shelf and into the central aisle of the boat, joining the tangle of bodies doing the same.

  At the end of a voyage of several hundred light-years, a week navigating from the edge of the Hideout System, and twenty minutes getting down from orbit, there was naturally some kind of a problem with the airlock embarking tube.

  Daedalus’ anxious crewmembers waited impatiently while the sound of soft cussing emanated from the boat copilot as he worked to obtain a green latch light. Eventually, the recalcitrant light turned emerald and the sound of rushing air could be heard through the cabin. The ship lock opened, and spacers began to walk unsteadily into the tube and disappear.

  When it came to Mark and Lisa’s turn, he gathered up both of their bags, marveling at how heavy they were, and followed his wife to the tube.

  They caught a glimpse of sunlit moonscape as they crossed the gap to the main terminal. They hurried because the supernova remnant was above the horizon. When the nova rose, the background radiation level on Sutton was not healthy for long exposure.

  Then they were through the big port airlock, and entered a tunnel with bare rock walls slanting sharply downward. A dozen meters later, they spilled out into the subterranean arrival hall that seemed to have been expanded in their absence. At least, a section that had been closed off was now open to reveal a small snack bar for passengers waiting to disembark.

  Looking around at what seemed a teeming mass of humanity, but was in reality only about thirty souls, Mark was about to lead the way to an exit when a very young ensign approached them.

  “Commander and Lieutenant Rykand?” the boy asked in a voice that cracked as he spoke, as though its owner wasn’t quite through puberty.

  “Yes,” Mark responded.

  “Ensign Foxworth, sir… ma’am. Will you come with me?”

  “Where?” Mark asked.

  “The Admiral wants to see the two of you, sir.”

  The ensign was startled when two voices — one male, one female — both uttered the same short, sharp obscenity in unison.

  #

  Chapter Five

  Mark and Lisa followed the young ensign through the bowels of Sutton’s underground labyrinth, down two ramps, to a newly opened level of the base. They moved with the usual skating motion required by low gravity, lest too energetic a stride send them bounding into the air to crack a skull on the rough-hewn rock overhead. The walls were native stone, still bearing the scars of digging lasers under a transparent layer of atmosphere sealant. Thick black cables suspended from the ceiling carried power to the widespread overhead lamps. They paralleled smaller cables that glowed with the soft violet co
lor of shortwave lasers transporting data and communications. The corridor smelled of still-curing plastic.

  Ensign Foxworth led them to an emergency airlock door with the words “BASE COMMANDER” emblazoned on its otherwise dull surface. The door was of local manufacture, cast from iron ore mined and smelted a few kilometers from the base. The sign was redundant. The presence of two alert Marines with sidearms was sufficient to identify the inhabitant of this particular office.

  Foxworth pushed open the door. Inside was a small office dominated by a desk occupied by a decorative blonde in the uniform of a spacer-second. Besides the regulation work station in front of her and the intercom unit, the only other article in the spartan office was a large green plant with broad leaves sprouting from a yellow plastic bucket. A pair of sun lamps anchored to the overhead shone down on the plant, providing the office’s illumination.

  “Lieutenant Commander Rykand and Lieutenant Rykand to see the Admiral,” the ensign announced.

  “Yes, sir.” The assistant pressed a key on the intercom and repeated the information.

  “Send them in,” a familiar voice answered in response.

  “You can go in now.”

  “Thanks,” Mark answered. The closed door before him was a simple cast iron slab mounted on hinges and latched in the traditional manner. Mark pulled the door open, surprised at the inertia of it.

  Beyond was the inner sanctum. It was the typical hollowed-out gallery. The bare walls were decorated with paintings rendered on dull mirror sheets of cryo insulation stretched over metal frames. Most were of terrestrial scenes.

  “Mark, Lisa, welcome back!” Admiral Daniel Landon said, moving from behind his desk to greet them. He shook both of their hands and ushered them toward a side table where sat two large shiny pots. “Have some refreshments. Coffee or tea, as you like.”

  “Coffee, sir? Tea?” Lisa asked, slightly bewildered “Won’t you run short?”

  “That’s right, you two have been away for awhile,” Landon said with a chuckle. “Not to worry. A bulk freighter came in last month loaded with delicacies. Apparently, the Navy realized that we have been getting sick of carniculture and hydroponics. Not only coffee, but sugar! You’ll find the mess hall has all manner of delicacies now. Hell, we even have two kinds of muffins for breakfast.”

  Mark poured himself a black coffee and Lisa a cup of tea to which he added two white sugar cubes. The coffee smell caused his mouth to water, it had been so long. The cups were low gravity models, round bottoms with high, inward sloping sides — a compromise between true cups and the sealed bulbs they drank from aboard ship.

  Mark carried the drinks to the Admiral’s desk, set them down on the polished metal surface, then sat down in the second visitor’s chair. Lisa had already settled into the first. Cautiously, to avoid spillage, they each took a sip of steaming liquid. Somehow, the moment made all of the months of fear and boredom worth it.

  The admiral resumed his seat and watched them, smiling like a beneficent father.

  “Damn it’s good to see the two of you again. What has it been? Three months?”

  “Nearly four, sir,” Lisa replied.

  “Hard mission?”

  “No, Admiral. Just long. There’s a certain amount of excitement with each jump through the gates. You don’t know what you are going to run into in the next system and that gets the adrenaline flowing. It dissipates pretty quickly when the new system turns out to look just like the old, save for the color of the star. The first few hours after a jump are busy, while we locate the ecliptic and the system’s planets, get the eavesdropping equipment up and running, check the database to see if we can identify the locals. After that, it’s just boring routine until you reach the next stargate and it’s time to do it all over again.”

  “How many missions does this make for you, Lisa?”

  “This was our third.”

  “How is the survey going? Does it measure up to your expectations when you proposed this approach?”

  Lisa grimaced. She often wished everyone would forget just whose brilliant idea this sneaking around in Q-ships had been.

  “In one respect, our explorations have far exceeded my expectations. I assumed we could spy out two or three systems before slipping away again. The survey just completed took us to eight star systems…”

  “And the other respect?” Landon asked.

  “Stargate network diagrams aren’t as useful as I thought they would be before we obtained the Pastol database.”

  “How so?”

  “They are topological maps rather than astronomical ones. A stargate diagram shows the sequence of jumps required to travel from Point A to Point B, but not where Points A and B actually are with respect to one another. In this respect, gate diagrams were like subway maps. In the middle of town, the scale increases to better show the numerous train stations and routes, while it contracts in the suburbs and countryside because the stations are correspondingly far apart.

  “Our problem is that we need to know where the Sovereignty’s stars are located in space before we can launch operations against the Broa. Figuring out where we were after each jump was the responsibility of my loving husband here.”

  “Any difficulties, Mark?” the Admiral asked.

  “Not usually,” he responded. “We automatically do a circumambient scan after emerging in a new system and then it’s a matter of looking for the common signpost stars, and of course, the Crab Nebula. Usually, we are approximately where we expect to be. As we learned at Gamma last year, stargates are directional and have to be pointed in the direction of the jump. Still, there are always a few surprises when we get our position plotted.”

  “While Mark and his people map the system,” Lisa continued, “I and my section record all of the local chatter. Mostly we can’t understand a word, but we try to accumulate enough data to give the linguistic computers a statistically valid sample to chew on.”

  “How often do you get translations?”

  Lisa shrugged. “About one-quarter of the time. The problem is that we don’t spend enough time in any one system.”

  “What about the Broa?”

  “Three of the star systems were definitely occupied by the overlords. One might have been a sector capital, albeit a small one. We got some good recordings in the Broan language from that one.”

  “What about the slave species you observed? Any candidates for our subversion program once it’s launched?”

  “We found five of the eight in the Pastol planetary database,” Lisa said. “All are bipeds of one sort or another. There’s one batch that look like little bears with long, fluffy tails. Specialists are studying their database entries to see if any of them fit in with our plans.”

  Dan Landon considered what he had been told for a moment, and then nodded. “Sounds like a productive trip. Are you ready for something different?”

  “Different, sir?” Lisa asked, distress obvious in her voice. “We thought we would have some time to relax before we had to go out again.”

  “You misunderstand,” Landon replied. “I’m not asking you to go out again.”

  “Then what are you asking, Admiral?”

  “Your idea for a Q-ship Survey was a good one. But Staff has been concerned about the pace since the outset. You hit eight systems in a little over three months. When you consider how many Broan stars there are, at this pace it will take longer than any of us will live. Either we get more resources or we find some way to speed up the survey.”

  He fixed his gaze on Lisa. “That is where you come in. How would you like a new job?”

  #

  “New job, sir?” Lisa asked, her internal sensors at full gain and suddenly suspicious. “What new job?”

  “I believe you saw it on the way in.”

  She frowned, puzzled. Then recognition dawned.

  “The stargate!”

  He nodded. “The stargate. Bill Lonegon and the Lancer group snagged it away from the Broa as slick as any bank
heist in history. Better yet, they don’t know it’s gone and may not for decades. The system we purloined it from has been dead for a century.”

  “What shape is the gate in?”

  “Surprisingly good. It appears fully functional. It passes all of the diagnostics we’ve figured out how to run. Now all we need do is learn everything we can about its operation and get that information back to Earth.”

  “Can we do that, Admiral?”

  “There are practical problems, of course. However, I am hopeful. The gate has a full set of technical specifications stored in an onboard database. Hardly surprising. We do the same with our starships. No sense having all of the repair manuals back at base if you break down a thousand light-years from home, is there? More importantly, this is the sort of stuff you don’t find in planetary databases; at least, not in the databases of slave species.”

  “So why are you talking to us?” Lisa asked.

  “Because we’ve run into a problem. The data isn’t written in the trade language Sar-Say taught you. It is written in what you might call ‘technical Broan.’ We’re having difficulty translating it. The computers just aren’t picking up the nuances.”

  Lisa frowned. “I’m not technical, Admiral. I minored in Romance Languages in school.”

  “You are still the best linguist we have. When we brought Sar-Say back from New Eden, I thought he was mute. Yet, he began to speak to you from practically the first moment you laid eyes on him. Everything we know about the enemy lingua franca is based on your initial work. It isn’t a matter of knowing the science. It’s a matter of being able to grasp the meaning of words from context and interpolation.

  “What about Mark? I don’t want to leave him.”

  “I would never think of breaking up either your team or your marriage. It’s lonely enough out here without making it more so. In fact, I believe ours is the first navy in history that has made it a priority to accommodate married couples.

  “And in that vein, I have a new assignment for Mark, as well — if he wants it.”