Sleeping in the Stars Page 2

  “Not good, Buster.”

  “I calculate a probability for catastrophic destruction and death at over ninety-two percent, Captain.”

  “Fight or flight fight or flight,” Krag mumbled as he thought.

  The ex-combat pilot could stop and fight, being confident that the three trailing cruisers were no match for his transmogrified little ship. But then the six cruisers at the other end of the vice would be able to get into the fray. Nine-to-one odds were too much.

  “Flight,” he stated.

  “Captain, I detect missile launches”

  “Analysis?”

  “Eighteen, Sir. Two from each trailer and two from each ship at the blockade.”

  “Types?”

  “From sensor readings, the six from our pursuers are rabbits. The twelve from the blockade are hounds. My readings indicate none are nuclear.” Buster’s military vocabulary included slang descriptors for the various types of military material and munitions.

  “Ok. Six light and fast. They can kill us, have high speed but short range. They’ll get to us but we can stop those. Twelve long range, slow with a big kick. Those can dog us across the entire system. And we don’t have enough ordinance or decoys to stop all of them. How soon until intercept?”

  “Forty-three minutes on the rabbits. Seventy-seven on the hounds.

  “We have got to get out of this system!”

  For forty minutes Marston kept looking and planning for his escape. For forty minutes he planned his defense against the six fast coming instruments of his demise. During his constant search for an exit strategy, Krag kept dodging the incoming laser and particle beams.

  Buster, the AI, flew the Griffin under normal conditions. But, in combat situations, Krag did the flying, jinking on instinct, randomly grabbing the evasion maneuver programs that, as a combat pilot, Krag had developed over his years commanding a fighter squad for the Federacy. While an AI’s logic process could be extrapolated and anticipated by other AI’s, Krag’s erratic maneuvering caused the attacking computers that handled the various SOL beams to constantly miss the juking target.

  The ex-fighter pilot evaluated the half-dozen red dots representing the blockade of Federal police ships, the three red dots representing the pursuing cruisers and the eighteen rapidly closing dots of the missiles. Krag began to form a plan.

  Strapped in and cushioned from every violent dodge, Krag, jumped and wove his ship through the constant barrage of laser and particle beams. All the while, the missiles kept coming.

  He constantly verified that the broad spectrum sensor dampening and energy disbursement fields were running at maximum. With them on and the ID transponder off, no scanners could lock onto or identify the fleeing ship. With the visual wave distortion field bending the light around the jinking ship, no one could even get a visual look at its configuration. To all sensors, the Griffin was just an amorphous, black lump holding three blazing torches, rocketing and careening through the black vastness of space.

  The trailing police assault cruisers held fairly high pursuit speeds and kept pressing the fleeing ship into the police blockade, keeping up a fusillade of laser and particle fire. If they succeeded, Griffin and its captain would be pounded into so much scrap and flayed carcass, like steel between a hammer and an anvil. So the ex-fighter pilot kept the small ship juking and dodging, while searching for a vector of escape.

  Finally he found one.

  “OK. We’ve reached the point where neither of the groups can get a good pursuit angle on us.” Krag exclaimed to no one but Buster. “17 degrees acclivity, 29 degrees port. Punch to 60 percent SOL. We head towards Latina. We’re going to act like we plan on hiding out there. Plot a slingshot around the planet that will launch us towards the Tolimar gate. Once we are out of sensor range, we use the gravity well to increase our angular velocity and set our escape vector. The gate’s about one and a half light years out. We should hit it in about three hours. Even with the steep angle of pursuit by our friends, we should be able to just make it.”

  “We’ll be showing them an upper hull quadrant,” Buster replied.

  “Can’t be helped. We need all the speed we can get. Cut the deflectors and reroute the extra output to the thrusters for maximum acceleration. Keep the sensory dampeners at maxim. Cancel evasion protocol and switch to full escape. And maximize the mag-grav. I don’t want to be stuck in this pod all the way to the Alcu-space gate.”

  “Done,” Buster responded after executing the proper commands. Before the acceleration cut in, Krag went weightless.

  “Buster?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Execute.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Within a microsecond, the AI re-aligned to the new heading, executed the millions upon millions of commands required to re-adjust the fusion drive, released a measured amount of deuterium/tritium slurry into the fusion reaction chamber where it super-compressed, forming a high-temperature plasma. That highly compressed, superheated slurry ignited a fusion reaction that blasted a solid stream of molecules and subatomic particles out the three fusion engines’ exhaust. The laws of mass displacement took over and the little ship, leaped to point six the speed of light.

  The pursuing police were left flat footed and slack-jawed. A small ship like that should not have had the ability to achieve that kind of speed. And, without proper identification signals or clear visual sightings, no one knew exactly whom they were chasing. Their superiors were not going to be happy.

  The captains of the three trailing cruisers redirected their flights, identified the new heading of their unknown subject and guessed incorrectly that this unsub would head for planet fall on Latina. The three patrol ships accelerated as fast as possible towards the planet, knowing that they’d be too late but hoping that they’d find an energy trail that would lead them to wherever the landing zone was.

  Krag popped the latch. The compression padding withdrew and the Command pod slid open. Pulling himself out, the exhausted pilot stood and rolled his shoulders, shedding the gut-clenching tension and fear. Removing the tactical helmet and shaking out his blond, sodden hair, he placed the headgear on its storage rack. Then, pressing his hands in his lower back, bowing back, rolling his neck, grunted. “Buster, any pursuit?”

  “Yes, but they are falling back. We should have some time once we exit the Alcu-space gate.” the AI replied.

  Although humanity was currently the soul inhabitants of the Orion arm of the Milky Way, it knew that that it hadn’t been the first. Some thousands of years ago, a now dead or simply gone alien civilization had built the gates.

  Alcu-space gates were the result of the connection of two singularities in normal space. Huge obsidian colored rings marked the openings of the gates. These rings were so large that multiple Federacy battleships or carriers could pass through them with room to spare. For centuries, scientists had no luck in discovering what metal or alloy or substance these rings were made from. For centuries scientists endeavored to discover how these gates operated and how to duplicate them. For centuries all efforts ended in failure.

  The best that the brightest scientists in the known universe could come up with were that these gates were some sort of space warp generators. Five hundred years ago, a mathematician from old Earth, Miguel Alcubierre had postulated a mathematical formula that defined gravitational bubbles that would warp space, functionally folding space through these bubbles to bring two points in space closer together. The more folded the space, the closer the points and thus the trip would be shorter. Since trips took multiple days then it was postulated that these ‘Alcubierre gates’ didn’t fold space completely, simply created great curves that brought the end points closer together. The results of these curved ‘Alcu-space’ corridors, or wormholes, were voyages that took days, not light years. The rough calculations came out to one day of Alcu-space equaling fifteen light years of normal space travel.

  Krag Marston had Buster push his ship towards one of these gates by way o
f sling-shotting around Latina, the soul habitable planet in the star system, Arium.

  “That went well. A little hairy, but well. They shouldn’t be able to catch us. I’ll be in my cabin.” With that, the captain shuffled to his quarters. The mag-grav generator, at full Earth-normal generated only sixty percent of the gravity that Krag Marston had grown up with, so an unplanned step would have sent him into a bulkhead. Having been born and raised on a heavy-gravity planet, New Brittany of the Australian Minor system, the ex-starfighter pilot had to be more careful than most.

  When he peeled off his suit and mag-grav liner Krag no longer experienced the effects of the mag-grav generator. As he floated off the deck, he pushed against a bulkhead and redirected his float to his bunk. Pulling himself into the gravity bag, Krag commanded, “Buster, Dig up everything you can about where we are going to end up and let me know what we’re getting into.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When I wake up.”

  With that final command and acknowledgement, Krag crashed into a dreamless sleep. Krag never closed a conversation with Buster by saying “over” or “out”. He didn’t need to. Buster was always on line, always linked to the cranial net wrapping around and inserted into Krag’s brain. The highly efficient, almost-AI always listened and monitored.

  In space, there is no friction to slow an object down. Usually a ship will slowly accelerate to the desired speed then simply drift at that speed and that direction until a course correction or deceleration is required. For this dash, the Griffin attained maximum velocity in minimal time and rocketed along its ballistic trajectory towards Latina and ultimately the gate. Top speed continued through the maneuver around the planet and on towards the gate until an hour before entrance. Then Buster flipped the Griffin over, applied full thrusters and slowed to entrance speed. The magneto-gravity dampeners kept adjusting to keep the captain alive and unaware of the extreme force vectors trying to twist and break the fast ship. Fifteen minutes before Griffin reached the hyper-space gate entrance, Buster flipped the ship back to bow-forward and pinged the Captain.

  Palming his eyes, Krag sat up, stretched and yawned, trying to fight off the heavy sleep from too much stress and the after effects of the adrenaline rush.

  “Yes?”

  We are ready to enter the gate, Captain.”

  “How is the gate security?”

  “Minimal, Captain. A single border ship. Their weaponry shouldn’t damage us for the short time we are in range. They are hailing us.”

  “Ignore them. Keep the recognition suppressors and visual dampeners at maximum. And redeploy the energy disbursement deflectors. So, what did you find about our destination?”

  Again, palming his eyes, Krag felt the physical drain and adrenaline burn of the constant fight and flight spanning the last eighteen hours and was loath to get off his bunk. Once he got his feet to the deck Krag gently floated off the bunk. Releasing a long, jaw-cracking yawn, he pushed over to a cabinet, pulled out a clean mag-grav liner and slipped it on. The ship’s mag-grav generator pulled him to the floor, simulating Earth-normal gravity. Being the only inhabitant on the ship and not in any immediate threat, Krag didn’t bother with any other clothes except for a pair of soft-soled slippers.

  Buster waited until Krag finished dressing then brought up the data on the screen in the Captain’s quarters and continued, “The class ‘G’ star resides towards the end of the Perseus arm of the galaxy. It has only one habitable planet, also named ‘Tolimar’. It’s a mining planet with approximately half a million inhabitants. Terra-forming began about three hundred years ago. It became habitable about one hundred and fifty years ago. Fairly undeveloped, with some agriculture and animal domestication along with the mining. There is one major continent with seven towns, the largest being Erstadt. ”

  “What’s the Federacy presence?” Krag asked.

  “Not much. It’s a fringe planet, not very valuable. The policing is done locally, by a private security company.”

  “What kind of exits are there?”

  “It’s pretty limited. Only two. One is the gate we will be coming in on. The second dead-ends at an uninhabited star system.”

  "How long in hyper-space?"

  "Eleven days, fifteen hours."

  "How far behind are the cruisers? Did they figure out what we did?"

  "Yes they did. They re-adjusted their flight path fairly quickly from Latina to the gate. They will enter the hyper-space gate about five hours after we do."

  "Go ahead and enter. Set the speed at ten percent over the trailing cruisers’ speed, whatever your data base says that is. We need to save our fusion slurry". With that final command and comment, Captain Krag Marston, formerly Major Marston of the Unified Federacy Space Force, shuffled out of his Captain’s quarters, down the stairwell and aft to check on his current illicit cargo.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, he looked back at the original owner’s luxury suite and turned towards the stern of the ship. Walking leisurely, Krag passed the four crew’s quarters (one had been turned into a prison cell). He stopped in the wardroom which served as the combination galley-workout-meeting room and punched in an order of coffee. Grabbing the steaming, lidded cup, he passed through the engineering room with all its electronics and fusion reactors and arrived at the storage bay.

  At eighty feet by fifty-five, the bay was the largest single space in the ship. Krag shuffled over to the escape/landing shuttle, and read the status panel. All was functioning properly. Next, he checked the labor android that wasn’t an android, but Buster’s avatar, a full combat android, human-like in shape and tank-like in function. Its external battle armor had been removed to give it a softer appearance. The flesh-toned plastiskin on its head, hands and feet and its anthropomorphic shape softened its real purpose-breaking things and killing people. Also to hide its real purpose, the torso and limbs sported bright yellow paint with markings and stencils indicating its purpose being a labor drone and the name ‘Clyde’ stenciled across its chest. When Buster wasn’t occupying the avatar’s computer, a simple command-and-perform processor handled the simplistic activities. Krag saw that its status panel also read green.

  Then the captain shuffled over to a spot on the decking, foot-tapped two floor grates in the proper sequence and a hidden lid popped open. He saw the cases still firmly strapped to their racks. He opened one and removed a crystal. Peering into the multi-faceted gem, he could see the swirling rainbow that made it so valuable. This particular contraband item was a hallucination gem. When coupled with its face mask, the user went into a psychedelic state that proved to be so addicting that many users literally wasted away until they died. But Krag Marston didn’t concern himself with that anymore. He had spent twenty years trying to protect the people of the Federacy and he learned that some people didn’t want that protection. So, if they wanted to destroy their lives, Krag believed that they had that right. And the bay was filled with twenty thousand of these crystals. Being highly illegal and universally banned in the Federacy and, being on the black market, very expensive. Staring at one swirling rainbow, the ex-fighter pilot reflected on the actions that he had taken to get to this spot as smuggler from Federacy Space Force Major.

  * * * * *

  It had been his seventeenth year in the United Federacy Space Force. The Federacy had become more dictatorial, more punitive. It had also become more corrupt. The citizenry became more vocal, more resistant. The Federacy, in turn became more aggressive, more military. It established the Bureau of seditious Activity. That bureaucratic agency received almost carte blanche power, a space fleet, fighter wings and assault forces.

  Vice Admiral Theodore Weiskoff the Third became its fleet commander. Major Krag Marston became the wing commander. The two rivals since the academy connected once again, with Weiskoff in control.

  The populous vocalized their fears. They protested the restrictions. The Federacy reacted with Social Harmony Education centers. Any perceived wrong against the Federa
cy would get an individual sent to the centers for indoctrination or re-education. As more people protested, more people were sent to those camps. This, in turn, caused the growth of a political and social revolt. The cycle became a snake eating its tail. Something had to give.

  It came in the form of the original colonial planet. Pantea, in the Atlantius system felt that it didn’t need the jack-booted rule of the Federacy. The solar system, being the first out-system colony of the Earth Alliance, always was self-reliant. And, being more than thirty-five days from Cencore, Never felt the need to belong to the Federacy. Pantea’s people took a vote. The planet’s government declared independence. The federacy sent in the troops.

  It started with a bombardment.

  The Federacy sent a fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Theodore Weiskoff the Third. The flotilla was supported by multiple fighter wings. Major Krag Marston had been transferred to the Sedition Department of the space force and led a wing of six fighters. As such, he was no longer tasked with the defense of the Federacy, but rather the policing of political and property criminals. His command was tasked with intercepting all ships leaving the planet. If they failed to heave to, then he was ordered to shoot them down. Major Marston’s wing scored twenty-two kills that day. He, alone, accounted for eight of them. That day hadn’t been a war for the Major and his wing. It had been a slaughter of civilian craft. But Major Krag Marston, and his wing, did as Vice-Admiral Weiskoff commanded.

  On day two, Major Marston’s wing flew ground support, ordered to strafe any civilian militia movement on the ground. His wing, along with the other wings, killed hundreds, into the thousands. They strafed and bombed airports, supply depots, ocean ports.

  Day three, the uprising ended. Tens of thousands of the planet’s population had died. The economic infrastructure had been destroyed. The once successful planet became a planet of poverty and despair.