guess it’s time to phone home and tell mommy and daddy the bad news.” Super-battleship sightings qualified for immediate reporting, regardless of where they were or what other activity was going on. Short of invasion alerts, they were the Navy’s highest priority.
He was just calling up the STARNET link when an audible alarm went off.
“Warning,” the computer said urgently in the sultry female voice Weigand had programmed in, “radical change in profile for targets Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. Vector analysis initiated.”
Weigand ignored the flashing STARNET access screen, alerting him to the fact that he was accessing a controlled military intelligence link, and that any unauthorized use could result in fines, imprisonment, or both. “Highlight profile changes,” he snapped.
The main holo display split into three smaller holos, each zoomed in on one of the three Kreelan targets. “Targets Alpha and Bravo” – the two maneuvering flotillas with the battlewagons – “are executing near- simultaneous course changes toward a similar navigation vector. A new maneuvering target is separating from target Charlie; designating new target Delta. Target Delta is accelerating rapidly along a similar vector as Alpha and Bravo.”
Weigand watched as the two designated flotillas hauled themselves around in what he could see was more than a casual maneuver: the ships were cutting the tightest circle in space that they could. The third flotilla, coming out of orbit, was accelerating at what must be full thrust to get far enough away from the planet’s gravity well to jump into hyperspace.
“Warning,” the computer bleated again, “Targets Alpha and Bravo have executed hyperspace jump. Calculated time for target Delta is thirty-six seconds.”
Those ships were going somewhere and fast, Weigand thought. He hit the ship’s alert klaxon. Stankovic and Wallers would have to finish their little party some other time.
“Crew to general quarters!” he snapped over the intercom.
Golda, his exec, was in the seat next to his before the klaxon finished its third beat and automatically switched off. There was no need for big-ship sounds in a scoutship. “What’s going on, Josef?” she asked as she strapped in and scanned her console.
“Alpha and Bravo just hauled around to similar vectors and jumped,” he told her as he started the computer feeding information to STARNET while he began composing a manual report for the intel types on the other end. “A new crowd came zipping out of orbit–”
“Target Delta has jumped into hyperspace,” the computer said, “at time nineteen thirty-seven-oh-four Zulu.”
“Computer,” Golda said, ignoring the bustle of the other six people on board who were now cramming themselves into their respective positions throughout the tiny vessel, “can you project navigation vectors to potential targets?” Unlike in “real” space, where a ship could alter course at will, in hyperspace it was restricted to linear motion along its last vector until it dropped back into the Einsteinian universe. That being the case, the ship’s vector just before it jumped could be used to plot potential destinations. Of course, there was always the chance the ship would drop out of hyperspace somewhere, maneuver onto a different vector, and jump again in a completely different direction.
“The only human target along projected axials for all three target groups is Erlang, trans-Grange Sector,” the computer said immediately.
“What’s on Erlang?” Weigand asked as he watched the computer pump information into the STARNET buffer before it was sent in a subspace burst to a receiver many light years away.
“Population one point five million. Terran sister world. Responsible for seventy-five percent of strategic minerals and metals for trans-Grange shipyards.”
He and Golda shared a glance. “Estimate the probability of Erlang vector being initial course only, and not the final destination.”
The computer was silent for a moment. “Probability is non-zero.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Golda asked.
Before the computer could reply with its own explanation, Weigand said, “It means that whoever’s on Erlang is going to be hip-deep in shit.”
Those were the same sentiments of the young Marine STARNET watch officer. Buried in the special STARNET processing and analysis center two kilometers beneath the surface of Earth’s moon, she glowered at the reports from three different scoutships. They were in far flung regions that read the same except for numbers and types of ships: a massive Kreelan battle fleet, probably the largest ever seen during the entire war, was headed for Erlang.
“Send a FLASH to Tenth Fleet,” she ordered the yeoman sitting at the fleet communications station, “and get confirmation that they have this information.”
While the analysts behind her were busy piecing together what information they had, she turned to her own console and hit a particular button. After a moment when all her screen said was “Call in Progress: Line Secure,” a bleary-eyed but alert face finally appeared.
“Admiral Zhukovski,” she said, “STARNET is declaring an impending invasion alert for Erlang, in the Trans- Grange sector.”
A man all too used to these calls in the middle of the night, Zhukovski’s expression hardened, a reflection of his soul as it readied itself for more bad news, the announcement that yet more human lives were about to be lost.
“Brief me, captain,” was all he said before he sat back, his good eye fixed on her image as he listened to her report, his good hand clenched tightly out of view of the monitor.
Thirty-Two
Enya sat quietly in the semi-darkness of the hastily completed command bunker, shielded from the ops section by a blanket hung over a cord strung between two walls. She was maintaining a vigil over Reza. Three days after she had touched the crystal and started the mysterious reaction, Reza still lay unconscious. His heart beat very slowly, his breathing slower still. In fact, were it not for the sophisticated medical instruments available to the company medics, they probably would have thought him dead.
In the meantime, the rain of ash from the disintegrating mountain had finally stopped, most of it consumed by the cutting beams originating in the center of the mountain. Finally spinning so fast that the beams became a nearly solid disk of energy, they began to sweep upward, forming a rapidly narrowing cone of brilliant cyan that quickly destroyed what was left of the mountain. They swept the debris up and away into the upper reaches of the atmosphere where it formed a cloud that easily rivaled the one on Earth after the explosion of Krakatoa centuries before. The area around the mountain had experienced horrendous winds that had done much damage to Mallory city and the nearby townships. But those, too, had finally subsided, leaving amazingly few casualties in their wake. After the beams had done their work clearing away the mountain top, they also disappeared, leaving behind a perfectly smooth bowl, a gigantic crater, that now radiated a ghostly blue glow, much less intense than the cutting beams, from its center into the dark heavens above.
“Any change?” Hawthorne asked quietly.
Enya shook her head. They had kept Reza here in the company firebase instead of moving him to the hospital in Mallory City mainly because Washington Hawthorne seemed to trust Belisle even less than the Mallorys did. Besides, Hawthorne had figured that it would not make any difference. A Mallory General Hospital neuro specialist had come and examined Reza, but could not make heads or tails of his vital signs and the basic changes in his
