McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS Read online

  “Why do you need artists, Lee?” she asked, “What are you doing, painting a mural that girdles the globe?”

  He laughed. “Nothing so mundane. We have a strategy… a trick; as it were… that we hope will sow confusion among our adversaries. It isn’t even a new trick. In fact, it was first used more than three thousand years ago.”

  “A trick?” she asked, her brow furrowing in a combination of frustration and curiosity. She wished he would just get on with it!

  “Can’t you guess? You saw the statue in the courtyard.”

  She shrugged. “Some sort of a horse.”

  “A Trojan horse.”

  That was, she realized, where she had seen the statue before. It was the horse from the last holo remake of Troy some thirty years previous.

  “I’m sorry, but now I am really confused.”

  “No problem. A few more preliminaries and it will all become clear. Have I piqued your curiosity?”

  She nodded. In truth, he had

  The work screen on Pembroke’s desk lit as he pivoted the display so that she could see it. On the screen was a scroll-list of text. It floated above the stylized horse figure in the background, with glowing crimson TOP SECRET banners emblazoned top and bottom.

  “Please read the statement and then acknowledge your agreement with your thumb print.”

  It was a non-disclosure form, but one unlike any she had ever read. As she scanned each line, the built-in sensors in the screen observed her eye movements and automatically scrolled the document to keep pace with her reading. When she reached the end, she looked up to see Pembroke staring intently at her.

  “Is this serious, Lee?”

  “As the life and death of our species.”

  “If I reveal what you are about to tell me, you will throw me in prison for life?”

  “Life plus a decade, just to make sure. We take security very seriously around here.”

  “I’ve noticed. So far this has been something from out of an old war movie. Where did you copy your system from, the old atom bomb project?”

  “As a matter of fact, that was one of our sources.”

  “It does seem… anachronistic. I wasn’t aware that there were Broan spies on Earth.”

  “One only and we have him locked safely away where he won’t bother us again. The fences, the guards, the agreement in front of you, are all intended to keep our secret from our own people rather than from our enemies.”

  “Why? Do you think there are more traitors like that one who helped our Broan captive escape a few years ago?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility. As an early American philosopher once said, ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public.’ But no. Our primary concern is that people won’t understand if they learn of our efforts here and at a dozen other sites around the globe.”

  “Wouldn’t understand what, Lee?”

  “Affix your thumbprint, and I’ll explain it to you.”

  “And if I choose not to?”

  “Then it is back to Albuquerque for reassignment. I think I can guarantee your next assignment will not be to your liking.” As he said it, she noticed that his jovial manner had slipped and the eyes that peered back at her seemed hard as diamonds.

  Susan hesitated for a moment, and then pressed her thumb against the screen. The screen beeped and the agreement disappeared, to be replaced by an egg-shaped spacecraft of a type unfamiliar to her.

  “This,” Pembroke said, gesturing at the screen, “is our Trojan Horse.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The world’s smallest starship. It has full stardrive and normal drive capabilities, although it doesn’t have much range. It would have trouble reaching Alpha Centauri on a single energy charge. Still, since it isn’t intended for our Navy, that doesn’t matter.”

  “Then whose navy is it intended for?”

  The lopsided grin returned, broader than ever. “We propose to build a few hundred of these little beauties, and distribute them judiciously through the length and breadth of the Broan Sovereignty.

  #

  Susan didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but that certainly wasn’t it. She was so startled that she hiccupped, and then, for good measure, said, “You can’t do that!”

  Pembroke paused for several seconds, regarded her with a calm look, and finally asked, “The idea bothers you?”

  Susan felt her face get hot as she flushed, embarrassed by her outburst. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Not since I was briefed into the project, as I am now briefing you. Relax. You’re going to pass out if you don’t get control of your breathing.”

  She hesitated, and then took several deep breaths. He was right. The pounding in her temple abated considerably. Finally, when she was once again in control of her emotions, she asked, “WHY?”

  “Why what?”

  “The stardrive is our only advantage over the Broa. Surely you aren’t going to give it to them.”

  “Not to the Broa. To their slaves.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not at all. You’ve studied Broan history, of course.”

  She nodded. Everyone who attended the Space Navy Academy was well-schooled in their enemy’s physical, societal, and astrographic characteristics.

  Pembroke continued. “The Broa are neither strong nor swift. They are small by our standards, and by those of almost every intelligent species in the Pastol database. They reproduce slowly and do not seem any more individually capable than a typical human. Yet, they rule the known universe. Can you explain that?”

  “The stargates.”

  He nodded. “Correct. Their power comes from absolute control of star travel in their realm. Like the ancient iron horse, everyone in the Sovereignty travels the tracks laid down by their masters, or they do not travel.”

  “But the stardrive…”

  “Is already known to the Broa.”

  “It is?”

  “It must be. Stargate and stardrive are brother technologies. If they discovered one, surely they must have discovered the other.”

  “Then why don’t they use it?”

  “They can’t afford to. The stardrive gives its possessor mobility the Broa don’t want their subjects to have. It would destroy the control they have over them. In fact, our intelligence types think that once enough slave species know about the stardrive, the Sovereignty will come apart at the seams.”

  She considered the new thought for long seconds. When she spoke again, her tone was dubious. “It seems logical, I suppose, but won’t that take time, maybe even generations? Once the Broa learn about these Trojan horses, they are going to come looking for us. Then it will be a race to see whether we can subvert their subjects before they find and kill us. From what they told us at the Academy, it’s a race we are liable to lose.”

  “What if we throw them off the scent? What if we convince them that the Trojan horses are coming from inside the Sovereignty rather than outside? What if they think one or more of their slave species invented the starship?

  “That is the plan, and the reason we need artists so badly. It isn’t enough to build our little starships. We must also disguise their human origins; lay a false trail to send the Broa on a wild goose chase.”

  “Wild goose?”

  “Sorry. Antique expression. It means to send them into a skewed orbit. Our engineers are good at the technical details, but they lack imagination when it comes to creating an entire alien species out of whole cloth. For that we need artists.”

  “You want me to think up an alien species?”

  “They are pretty well thought up. They’re small, cuddly beings with six legs. They have to be small to fit in the Trojan Horses we are building. They have a language and a script of their own, but of course, everything in their computers will be duplicated in Broan. Otherwise, how will the slaves read the technical details on how you build a stardrive?”

  “So all of this securit
y is to protect what is basically a fictional story with its own little cartoon characters?”

  “Pretty much,” Pembroke chuckled. “You saw how you reacted when I told you what we do here. Think of five billion people plugging in tomorrow morning and getting the news without the benefit of our little chat. This is important, perhaps vitally so. However, it’s not something we can explain to the general public. Later, when the plan has had time to work, it will be different. Now, however, mum’s the word.”

  #

  Chapter Nine

  Mark Rykand sat alone in the passenger compartment of the orbital shuttle and watched one of Sutton’s black-brown plains below. Like Luna, Sutton had been periodically bombarded by rocks from space, forming craters with bright rays spewing forth from the impact sites. And like Luna, the surface had been flooded with molten magma at some time in the past to form vast volcanic ‘mares’ that would have made good ground car parks.

  At the moment, Sutton was between Brinks and Hideout, and even though it was officially night, the high albedo of the cloud-covered planet caused the moonscape to glisten with a silvery, eldritch glow. As Lisa had noted on their approach following their last patrol, it was surprising how something so ugly could also be beautiful.

  “Your ship is in sight, Commander,” the unseen pilot in the cockpit announced over the intercom. “Care to come forward for a look?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Mark replied into his vacsuit comm. Although suited, his helmet was lightly tethered to the seat next to him. He unstrapped, recovered the helmet and hung it from its shoulder hook, then pulled himself hand over hand toward the forward hatch, using the backs of the austere passenger seats to move along in microgravity.

  Once in the cockpit, he carefully maneuvered his armored legs into the right hand seat and strapped down. The pilot was a twenty-something young kid with a spacer’s close-cut red hair and a galaxy of freckles across his features.

  “There it is!” he said, pointing. His vacsuited arm pointed to a low star just above the moon’s limb.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Mark said, squinting to make out detail at this distance. As more than one spacer had noted, the human eye is an inadequate sensor for looking at things in vacuum. His efforts were not helped by the gauzy backdrop of the Crab Nebula, nor by the quiet chatter of the hull radiation detectors.

  As was every ship in the fleet, the ground-to-orbit ferry was heavily shielded against the supernova remnant’s residual radiation. Surface parties could avoid the problem by doing their work during ‘nova-night’— periods when the electric blue spark was below the horizon. In orbit, the supernova remnant was ever present and had to be dealt with directly.

  “It will get bigger,” the pilot said, referring to the ship. “We are ten minutes out.”

  Mark and Lisa had been eating breakfast in the commissary a week earlier when he’d received word that TSNS Amethyst had reported in the previous evening on the outskirts of the Hideout System. Mark sent a message to the ship’s captain introducing himself and asking when it would be convenient for him to report onboard. After several hours of light-speed delay, he received his reply. Captain Joseph Borsman would be pleased to interview him on the afternoon of the twelfth.

  Amethyst grew slowly from a dot of light in the forward windscreen, to a tiny jumble of shapes, to a toy ship, to a full-size war craft. Unlike his last ship, Amethyst did not ape any Broan design. She was a human-built cruiser with a long cylindrical body and the usual forest of antennas and radiators sticking out haphazardly around her periphery. She had two weapons pods and a girdle of spherical fuel tanks around her waist. The pods each contained a dozen superlight missiles, theoretically making her a match for anything in the Broan Navy. Of course, in warfare, theory and practice frequently diverged.

  There followed five minutes of maneuvering in which a series of quiet popping sounds announced the operation of the attitude control jets. When the bow thrusters fired, a momentary cloud of gossamer appeared beyond the shuttle’s forward bubble. Finally, Amethyst was a massive wall overhead as the cruiser’s dorsal airlock slid slowly rearward, quickly passing from view. A few more pops from the jets and the shuttle shook with a familiar vibration. Several lights on the control panel blinked green and the screen showed the words DOCKING COMPLETE.

  “We have arrived, sir. Good luck with your new ship.”

  #

  Mark exited the docking tube directly into the suiting room aboard Amethyst. As he did so, he was met by four Marines and the Officer of the Deck, an ensign no older than his shuttle pilot. All five were anchored to the deck, which allowed them to obey the command, “Right hand, salute!”

  The arms came up smartly, saluted, and then were snapped down in unison after the regulation two-second pause, not waiting for his response. Although microgravity made an answering salute optional, Mark reached out for the “barber pole” just beyond the airlock, levered himself into an “upright” posture, and did his best to emulate their precision before responding, “Permission to come aboard, sir?”

  “Permission granted!” came the reply.

  “Commander Rykand,” he said by way of introduction as he floated to where the ensign was anchored.

  “Ensign Palmer, sir. Welcome to Amy.”

  “She’s a new ship, I see.” Actually, he smelled. There was still that trace odor of paint drying that permeates a ship for the first couple of years out of the yards. It wasn’t that the paint had not yet dried, but rather that human body and other odors had not yet built up to overpower the volatile chemicals still being given off by the walls.

  “Yes, sir. We came out of construction dock a month before we took the Big Jump.”

  “First time?” he asked. The Big Jump was what the crews called the voyage from Sol to Hideout.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve made it three times now. Trust me; it doesn’t get any shorter with practice.”

  “No, sir. Would you like an escort to take you to the captain, sir?”

  “Please. I’ve never been aboard this model cruiser before,” Mark replied, pretending not to notice the expression that flashed across the features of a couple of Marines still standing at attention. As Executive Officer, the ship’s Marine detachment would be his responsibility, as indeed, would the entire crew. He resolved to demonstrate at the first opportunity that the look had been unwarranted.

  “You can unsuit over there, sir,” the ensign said, pointing out the long bank of coffin-shaped suit lockers that disappeared down a curved passageway. The requisite array of holding fixtures projected from the bulkhead opposite the airlock.

  Mark spent the next five minutes removing his suit. First he backed into the upper holding clamp until he heard the ‘click’ of his backpack seating into the anchor point. Next, secured to the bulkhead, he reached down and opened the waist ring, before shoving the pants down to half staff. He then raised his arms over his head, anchored his boots to the deck cleats, and slowly went into a deep squat to extract his trunk from the hard upper torso assembly. As soon as his head cleared the waist ring, he pivoted in the deck cleats like a skier reversing direction on a downhill run. That allowed him to ‘stand’ at an angle, while avoiding collision with the torso. A quick release of his boots from the cleats and he was floating in mid-air. He jackknifed to bring the boot rings into range of his outstretched fingers. A quick gesture released the boots, allowing him to ease his feet free. He then pushed the suit pants off his legs in a maneuver reminiscent of the way women once peeled off their girdles. A few quick reconnections put the entire assembly back together, sans its wearer. Finally, he removed his ship shoes from a pouch and slipped them on.

  Turning to the waiting ensign, he said, “Lead on.”

  Palmer led him through the corridors of the ship toward the control room, which was amidships rather than in the bow. They passed an open hatch through which people in acceleration couches were doing various things while watching lighted screens. Mark and Ensign Palm
er floated down the corridor to where a Marine stood anchored.

  “Kurosaki, this is Commander Rykand, the new Exec. Please announce him to the captain.”

  The relay of orders wasn’t strictly necessary, but the Navy had its traditions. The Marine on guard keyed his comm unit and announced that Commander Rykand, the new Exec, would like to see the captain. He listened to the reply and then said, “You can go in, Sir.”

  The hatch powered open and Mark used handholds to pull himself through. Once again he levered himself into a vertical orientation, snapped off a salute with his right hand while holding himself steady with his left, and said, “Commander Mark Rykand, reporting for duty, sir!”

  Captain Borsman was strapped into his desk. He looked up at Mark’s entry and waited for the announcement before responding.

  “Welcome aboard, Commander. Take a chair and strap yourself in.”

  Mark did as he was told, securing himself to a visitor’s chair bolted to the deck.

  “I’ve been looking over your record. You aren’t regular navy, are you?”

  “No, sir. I came to the service by a rather circuitous route.”

  “Tell me about it, Mister.”

  Mark quickly sketched how he had been notified of his sister’s death aboard Magellan, had felt they weren’t telling him everything, and set out to find the truth. He recounted how he had made an illegal approach to PoleStar, been chased by security, and in attempting to elude them, happened to look in a port beyond which he’d found a yellow-eyed alien looking back at him.

  “After that, I was given the choice of joining the project or spending my days in the lunar prison. I chose to join.”

  “Can’t say I approve of a man with such a cavalier attitude toward authority,” Captain Borsman replied. “There will be none of that aboard my ship.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Continue.”

  Mark recounted the first expedition to Broan space and how he had learned Sar-Say’s true identity, and of the utter despair they felt as they fled Klys’kra’t. He spoke of how he had come up with the idea of using Earth’s anonymity as protection while humanity worked to eliminate the Broa as a threat.