THE SHADOWS OF THE MULTIVERSE

A Novel of the Future

By

Doug Dandridge

“Goddamitt,” said Lt. Marishana Mangana.  Lucille looked up from the acceleration tank she was crawling into to see what the assistant tac officer was looking at.  The image of a battleship appeared on the main viewer, leaving the gate far to their rear.

“Shit,” added the captain to the cussing going through the bridge.  Flashes appeared at the front of the long cylinder as a dozen missiles left their acceleration tubes and headed for their targets.  Matter/antimatter warheads exploded into one of the covering destroyers, while the invisible beams of lasers ate through the hull of another.

“We aren’t at war with the Tripods,” exclaimed Lt. Ngyen.  “What the hell are they doing?”

Taking advantage of surprise, thought Lucille.  The poor bastards at the gate picket hesitated for a moment and paid for it with their lives.  A single warhead impacted on the alien battleship, blasting a small hole in the forward hull.  Within a second the counterattacking destroyer was spiraling away from the gate, a lifeless wreck.  Another cylinder rushed from the gate, a second battleship.  Followed by a third.

The lone remaining destroyer maneuvered as fast as her crew could handle, moving along the side of the gate sphere as if trying to escape.  Two of the Tripod battleships flared thrusters as they turned to follow, trying to lock their stationary particle beams on the target that was dodging and weaving away from their laser turrets.  A missile left a tube, followed by another.  But the destroyer’s crew was on the ball and a dozen interceptors left its stern mere microseconds after the missiles.  Interceptor missiles struck, antimatter warheads erupted, and the space between hunter and hunted was filled with hellish radiation.

“They really foxed them,” said Ngyen, admiration in his voice.

Yes, thought Lucille.  The radiation will interfere with target acquisition as well as helping to diffuse the power of laser and particle beams.

The destroyer rotated swiftly in a maneuver guaranteed to cause casualties if the crew wasn’t in the tanks.  A message carrier streaked from a bow tube at thousands of gees acceleration, heading into a specific facet of the gate and disappearing before anyone could do anything about it.

Then the destroyer pulled another high gee turn, lining her own bow up on one of the pursuers and unleashing a volley of missiles.  It was to be her last volley.  Incoming fire tore through the radiation cloud.  Some of the enemy missiles lost target lock and sailed past the smaller ship.  Others smashed into her nose, warheads powerful enough to cripple a battle-cruiser like Navarin exploding into the thinly armored hull.  The fire of explosion ran instantly down the length of the ship, engulfing her in a maelstrom of flame while pieces of hull and fragments of internal machinery spun into the cold of space, as if trying to escape the inferno.  When the flame had attenuated enough to see the destroyer was gone as if it hadn’t existed.  Gone too were the three hundred crewmen and women aboard.

Counter missiles from a tripod battleship took out two of the destroyer’s last volley.  Laser fire from the target ship took out two more, leaving one to slam into the bow of the battlewagon.  The battleship was most heavily armored at the bow, while the destroyer’s torpedo was not nearly as powerful as the ones that had been launched by the tripod battleships.  But the fury of its explosion still caused damage to the battleship’s forward missile tubes and its particle beam projectors, as well as closing off its main KE cannon tube.  It also took most of the ship’s forward momentum away in an instant, which couldn’t have been healthy for the crew.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to all the great science fiction writers who paved the way.  And to those who saw this world of self-publishing and made it possible for us to be here on the web.

BrotherofCats@gmail.com

http://dougdandridge.net

Copyright © 2012 Doug Dandridge

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

“We’ve almost broken through.”

Those words echoed from out of the opening leading into the darkness of the crypt.  Howard Turner stood for a moment looking up at the stars, almost afraid to go back into the dark for the disappointment it might hold.  This was the fifth of the ruins of the ancients he had explored in his long career.  The other four had led to nothing.  This one might as well, though it had seemed different from the start.

He looked up at the stars once again, marveling at their beauty.  The two approaching galaxies shone clearly in their splendor.  One was a fairly normal dwarf galaxy, the other a mass of black holes, neutron stars, and blue giants.  That one was deadly, not the abode of life.  The experts said both would one day collide with this galaxy far from the home of mankind.  Then this galaxy would be flooded with the killing radiation that would sweep all life away.  But that was hundreds of millions of years in the future. Mankind would be long gone from here by then.  If not from the Universe as well.

Howard focused on the lights of one of the huge stations up in geosync.  One of the big factory setups that were turning out the hardware to build this world into a major human habitation.  A world farther from Earth than most of the great thinkers of history would have ever thought possible.  Farther than Turner thought he would ever have gone.

“Dr. Turner,” came the voice from inside the great crypt.  “We’re almost through.  You wanted to be there.”

“Thanks, Smothers,” he called as he turned and walked into the darkness, his light amplifying implants adjusting to give him a clear view.  The crypt itself was not large as compared to other ruins of the ancients he had explored.  But it was different.  In much better repair, as were the ruins of the great city above.  As if they had missed out on the destructive forces that had hit the other cities.

“They have the cut almost all the way through,” said Smothers, the leader of his crew, moving into step with his boss.

“If our calculations are correct,” said Turner.  They had not been able to probe through the material of the door, and it had proven invulnerable to all of their efforts until now.   Probing through the walls had proven no more revealing.  The ultra-hard alloy-stone mixture was only a four-meter façade over more of the impossible material that made up the door.  No easy way in.  Or out, came the chilling thought.  Though he couldn't imagine what could stay alive in there for forty million Earth years.  Even the best made machinery shouldn’t be that long lived.

Then the thought of the gates struck him.  The marvelous constructs that had allowed the human race to spread throughout the Universe.  There were too many of them, the great majority in orbit around systems with habitable worlds, for most experts to not agree they were constructs of some type.  Constructs billions of years old.  So who knew what the technology of the Ancients, as they were called, was capable of?

After a long walk deep into the bowels of the planet they came to the last chamber, in which the door of the vault opened.  A large piece of equipment sat on the floor in front of the door, looking like a heavy cannon attached to large storage tanks.  It hummed with energy as it fired a thin stream of silver through a long tube almost touching the door, working its way around the outer edge.  A half dozen men stood around it checking readouts and adjusting the parameters as needed.  Another half dozen stood waiting.  The specialists he had brought with him.

Howard knew the size of the tanks was an illusion as far as volume was concerned.  They held only a dozen kilograms or so of the precious material being used on the door, held in magnetic bottles within the tanks.  The most precious substance known, they had cost him a large percentage of his considerable fortune.  But the pursuit of the goal was worth anything.  And he felt lucky.  With a touch of luck that had seemed to follow him through his charmed existence.  Howard the Luck he had been called.  First as a physicist making amazing discovery after amazing discovery.  Since then as an archeologist, once he had left the frightening world of weapons research behind to delve into the past.

“The negative matter has almost burned through the material on the locking edge,” said Smothers, pointing to the silver stream that flared into the door.  There was no sign of the work it was doing.  The negative matter simply cancelled out the matter it touched with no sign of its destruction.  But Turner knew there was a microscopic crevice in the edge of the door. Almost all of the way through.

“What do you think we’ll find, Dr. Turner?” said Sarana Nakamura, the freelancer who had signed on to cover the opening for the news services.

Howard had thought her lovely from the start, with her black eyes and lustrous hair.  But she had been all business and had talked long and hard about her husband and family back on Trevor, half a Universe away from here.

“I’m not sure,” he said for the holovid.  He had already told her this many times, but he knew she had to get a current recording just before the opening.  “I just know it’s likely to be a surprise for all of us.  Hopefully a pleasant surprise.”

“Any risk of this vault being trapped?” she asked, her floating recorder hovering around the Archeologist.  He was barely aware of the whir of its fans keeping it steady in the air.

“None of the other ruins we have found across the Universe have been trapped.  I think the Ancients, as we call them, and remember we have dated their ruins from over three hundred million years ago to a mere forty million, revealing a very long-lived civilization.  The Ancients have never revealed a propensity to guard their secrets with traps.”

“And they are not the most ancient of the civilizations we have found?” asked the reporter.

“They are most ancient of the civilizations for which we have found planetary remains,” he replied.  “There were the artifacts found in space where they didn’t have to undergo the ravages of erosion.  Some of them are billions of years old.  And of course there are the remains of millions of shorter lived civilizations all over the explored Universe.  Some dating almost forty million years back.  But most within the window of the last ten million years.”

“And all of them disappeared sometime after they reached intergalactic travel?”

“All that reached intergalactic travel, yes,” he replied.  “Many of them destroyed themselves in wars before they reached that point.  And we really don’t know how many civilizations there are out there on worlds that don’t possess a gate.”

“The Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti and Altair colonies don’t possess these gates around their stars,” she said, trying to milk the moment for all it was worth.  “Doesn’t that prove that only stars with gates possess any kind of civilization?”

“Not at all,” he said, glancing at the vault door and the men operating the machinery that was to open it.  “Those are only three nearby stars.  Among billions of billions without gates.  We have only found a half dozen stars with gates in each of the galaxies we have explored.  Those three colonies may only prove that the human race is the only one pigheaded enough to want to colonize the nearby stars, when the keys to the Universe have been given to us.”

“And the worlds that the other races possess?”

“Some have opened their knowledge and resources to us.  As we have shared ours with their scientists.  Others, as you know, have not allowed any humans within their space.  Those who have gone there without permission have not returned.”  Like the Tripods, he thought with a disgusting image of the hideous aliens.

“Now excuse me,” he said.  “I think they are about to open the door and answer our questions.”

Howard walked toward the door while the large negative matter gun was moved backwards on it frictionless rollers.  Sarana continued to talk behind him, wrapping up her interview segment while a trio of holovid recorders caught the scene at the door from three different angles.  Turner knew that they were joined by a multitude of sensory probes held by many of those present. Looking for any anomaly, any information that might be of interest.

“Go ahead and attach the opener,” he ordered.  Men moved to obey, rolling the stout looking framework toward the door.  Once in place they drove the laser bolts into the hard stone-alloy, holding the framework tightly to the wall.  Armatures were swung out to the door while great suction cups were attached to the super strong material.  As soon as the cups were pressed tightly to the door pumps evacuated what little air remained, forming a tight seal.  Nothing else would connect.  Not glues.  Not electromagnetic forces.  Not any kind of bolt.

“Crank her,” yelled Turner over the excited speech around him.  The armatures began to move back, pulling at the door through the suction cups.  At first nothing happened as the armatures, made of the strongest alloys known to human science, actually began to bend slightly.  Turner was afraid the suction cups would pull free and he would have to rethink the project, finding another way to get through.

A loud cheer echoed through the chamber as the door began to shift, to swing outward slowly under the pressure of the pull.  A centimeter at a time, as if it had a will of its own and was resisting its opening, the door moved.  Turner studied his team as much as he studied the door.  Good people all, they stayed at their instruments, recording every event as the vault was opened for the first time in millions of years.

With a last groan the door swung open.  Turner swore under his breath as he took in the thickness of the material.  Over four meters of that marvelous substance.  If they could crack its secret alone they would all be rich beyond the dreams of the wealthiest mega-businesses in the Universe.  The door continued to swing open, revealing a pit of total darkness that not even his light amplification augments could penetrate.

A couple of his crew moved forward with powerful laser flashes, shining the bright beams into the darkness.  They might as well have flung matches into space for all the good it did.  The darkness stood, undispelled, in violation of any physical laws Turner had ever heard of.

“Is there anything blocking the way?” he asked Smothers, who was monitoring the panel showing the accumulation of all the instruments aimed at the void.

“Nothing that I can monitor,” said the technician.  “Nothing at all.  Nothing on radar, ladar or hyperwave.  It’s like the chamber doesn’t exist.”

“We’re getting an energy spike,” said one of the other techs.  “Off the scale.”

In front of them the blackness of the void began to ripple, as if something on the other side was trying to push through.  Weapons appeared in the hands of several of the crew.  Howard had hired them for their toughness and ability to survive as much as for their archeological skills.  Most had fought their way out of other sites, through aborigines or the hostile parties of other races.

A glowing tentacle thrust through the darkness, questing around as it felt its way.  The crew started inching back, out of reach of the limb.  A man raised his weapon to fire, a particle beam rifle from the look of it.  Turner raised his hand to stop him as he shook his head.  It had not shown hostile intent and he was damned if it would be his party that started a war with a race forty million years in the supposed grave.

“What the hell is that?” yelled Sanara Nakamura.  Howard turned as the shadows began to materialize in the room, bringing feelings of terror with them.  Nakamura screamed as one quickly engulfed her.  A scream that turned into a croak as her body began to shrivel within the grasp of the creature.  A desiccated corpse fell from the shadow as it moved on to the next target.

Turner backed toward the void as more of his people became victims of the unknown manifestations.  Screams rang through the chamber along with the phuts and hisses of projectile weapons and particle beams.  Weapons that did nothing to the things. Didn’t even slow them an instant, before they grabbed the weapon wielders and ended their lives.  The shadows were growing more substantial with each kill and soon there was only one living human in the chamber.

Turner pressed his back against the black field, his mind reeling in terror as he tried to find some way out of the room.  The tentacles continued to move about, almost cartoon like in the way they ended in midair.  They quested about as if they knew he was there but couldn’t locate him for some reason.

Dr. Howard Turner frantically looked for a way out, a way past the creatures.  He could find none.  They quivered a moment as if confused, then all turned in his direction as if they had finally located him.  They had him hemmed in and were tightening the circle slowly, as if they wanted to savor this last death.  Howard pushed his back against the barrier with all his strength but it wouldn’t yield.  His panicked mind forced him to try and put some more space between his life force and their ravenous appetite.  Even if that space was measured in centimeters.  He started as his back touched something soft, something moving.  And he remembered the different local tentacle that had come through the void.

Without warning the appendage grasped him in a grip that was both secure and gentle.  Through some connection he realized that this creature meant him no harm, and he did not fight it as it pulled him back into the darkness.  There was an instant of resistance and then he was through, into another world, another dimension of existence.  His poor monkey’s mind, only a couple of million years removed from the trees of home, could not grasp the world that was before him.  Unconsciousness closed the world off from him in merciful blackness.

*    *    *

“Commander.  Something’s going on down on the planet.”

Commander Nagara Matabwa looked up from his trivee as one of the techs called out.  What now, he thought.  Everything always seems to happen on my watch.

“What is it this time Krishnamurta?” he asked as he walked over to the console.  “Someone putting a shuttle down in the city park again?”

The tech was one of a dozen on duty here in the watch room of the space fortress.  He had the duty of monitoring the inhabited areas of the planet below.  And anything he noticed could have serious repercussions for an officer who ignored the situation.

“No sir,” said the tech.  “I’m not sure what’s going on. But people seem to be getting themselves killed.”

“What the hell do you mean?” asked the commander as he leaned over the tech and looked at the multitude of small screens set in the console.  The tech would be viewing the same information through direct brain link, getting a much clearer picture.  The screens coalesced into one large picture at the order of the tech and Matabwa felt the breath leave his body.

People were running through the streets of Allentown, the capital city of the planet Horas, one of the newest of humankind’s conquests among the jewels of the Universe.  The jewel had become Hell as the commander watched a shadow detach itself from a building and attack a civilian.  The woman shriveled up before his eyes, becoming a husk that fell from the shadow to shatter on the hard surface of the walkway.  The shadow moved on, to attack another victim as people hurried past.  One man leveled a light amp pistol at the shadow.  The beam ate runnels through the wall behind the creature with no apparent harm to the thing that continued to stalk a victim.

“Alert,” yelled Matabwa.  “Alert.  All crew to battle stations.  This is no drill.  Alert all forces in the system.  We are under attack by an unknown alien presence.  Get the planetary authorities on the vid and tell them to get their forces moving.”

The crew began to carry out their orders without question.  In a Universe linked by the gates trouble was always just over the next jump.  And the military took its job seriously.  Com links sprung to life.  Here a destroyer captain asked for confirmation of an emergency.  There the civil police chief of Gwalty Township called to see what the hell was going on.  It would be hours before the signal reached the gate in orbit around this system and the significant military resources that orbited it.

“Report,” ordered Captain Fisher, striding onto the control deck.

“Some unknown alien presence is attacking the civilian population in Allentown,” reported Commander Matabwa.

“Sir,” yelled one of the techs.  “Reports of attacks now in over a dozen communities.”

“Holo,” ordered the captain.

A huge representation of the planet below sprung into existence.  Red dots indicated all of the three dozen or so communities that had already been planted on the world.  Blinking red dots indicated the trouble spots, and as they watched four more of the dots started to blink.

Dammit, thought Matabwa.  The station carried an enormous amount of firepower, most of it facing out against the possibility of invasion from space.  Some particle beams and light amp weapons pointed in to support whatever ground actions might develop during such an invasion.  But they couldn’t use these weapons on population centers without causing horrible collateral damage.

“Order all marines to the boat bays,” said the captain.  “Immediate assault launch on the planet.  And ask the captains of any vessels in orbit to send what aid they can.”

“Yes sir,” called one of the com techs as the man concentrated on his link with the computer, ordering all the specified actions.

“Sir,” yelled another tech.  “Energy spike to the north. Above the planet.”

“Bring it on the screen,” ordered the captain.  The holo of the planet disappeared, replaced by a view high above the northernmost continent.  Space looked as if it were swirling with colors and the holo blanked in places as if it couldn’t adjust to some shades uninterpretable to the computer's brain.  Something began to coalesce.  To form out of nothing.

Matabwa’s brain refused to countenance what it saw in the holo.  The creatures were enormous.  Each bigger than the over three-kilometer wide space fort.  They looked like clouds of transparent ink, with thousands of kilometer long tentacles trailing in all directions.  A dozen or more of the creatures.  It was difficult to tell with the continued swirling of space around them.

“What the hell are they?” he asked, his eyes glued to the holo.

“Unknown, sir,” said one of the techs.  “But data suggests they are related to the manifestations on the planet below.”

“The manifestations?” said Matabwa.  “That’s it. The manifestations are not complete creatures.  They are part of these things.”

“You think they can’t exist wholly in this dimension within a gravity well?” asked captain Fisher.

“Yes sir,” said the commander. “No sir.  Hell, I don’t know, sir.”

“They’re coming this way,” called one of the techs.

“Weapons,” called the captain.  “Range those targets and open fire as weapons come to bear.”

A salvo of missiles flew from their ports toward the creatures, accelerating swiftly as they closed the distance.  Crew watched as the missiles contacted one of the targets and continued through without a pause.

“They’re not solid, sirs,” called one of the techs.

“Set next salvo for proximity detonation,” ordered Captain Fisher.  “Any sensor information on those things.”

“Negative sir.  Radar, ladar and hyperwave all show nothing there.  Passive radiation sensors show something.”

“Beam weapons right on target sir.”

Matabwa could see nothing happening.  He knew that the light amp and particle beam weapons would be invisible in space, but there should have been some kind of effect as they impacted the creatures.  Even if they were almost as tenuous as space itself.  But nothing was happening and the creatures drew nearer, hundreds of tentacles reaching from each being.

The next salvo of missiles launched, striking the nearest creatures within moments of flight.  Nuclear warheads detonated, filling space with a blinding light.  In seconds the bursts had disappeared as they did in vacuum.  The creatures flailed for a moment in frantic activity, as if they were in pain, then calmed.  Through the diminishing atomic fires came the creatures.  A couple continued on toward the station while the others diverged onto other paths that would lead them to whatever else was in orbit around the planet.

“Contact in ten seconds,” called a tech.  Matabwa prayed to the gods of his people for the preservation of his soul.  For he knew that nothing would save his body.  Within seconds the tentacles penetrated the tough skin of the station as if it didn’t exist.  Moments later the creature moved on, leaving a lifeless structure behind.

*    *    *

“Sir,” yelled one of the watch on the innermost of the gate’s space fortresses.

Lt. Commander Rosso Swenson was staring in fascination at the artifact they called a gate for lack of a better word.  He never tired of looking at it, even if it was the ten thousandth time.  It looked like any other of the millions of gates explored by humankind.  And he suspected the same as the other hundreds of millions in alien hands.  A moon size blob of shimmering silver twelve hundred kilometers in diameter, rotating once every five point eight hours.  A density five times that of Earth, though what accounted for that density no one knew, giving it a mass of one twentieth of the home world.  Facets on the globe, one point five kilometers across, over two million per gate.  Each leading to a different destination.

“What is it?” asked the officer, wishing he had not traded for this particular watch.  “Something coming through the gate?”

“No sir,” said the tech with tension in his voice.  “Something a little different I’m afraid.  Some anomaly in near space.”

“Let me see,” said Swenson, moving away from the viewer set on the gate.  The holo sprang into existence in the center of the chamber, showing a distortion in space growing larger every moment.

“What the hell is that?” asked the Lt. Commander.  Moments later he was calling an alert as the unknown creatures swept toward the fort.

*    *    *

Hours after the Weavers left Horus a planet uninhabited by intelligent life, intelligent life once again appeared, if only briefly.  In the desert sections of the planet, where sat the great ruins of the civilization of the Ancients, huge pieces of ground caved into the planet, revealing the doors of super strong black material that were sliding open.  Within moments hundreds of two kilometer wide openings pocketed the surface of the planet.

Out of each opening issued the ten kilometer cylinder of a ship, rising slowly through the atmosphere out into the vacuum of space.  Each was much too wide to fit through the facet of a gate.  As they reached orbit it became apparent that they would not need to.  Shimmering silver portals appeared in front of each ship and the vessels slid easily into them with no visible means of propulsion.  Moments later the environs of Horus were again empty of sentient life.

*    *    *

Sol system was home to the busiest gate in human space.  Thousands of ships a day transited through to other stars while millions of passengers and billions of tons of cargo waited among the thousands of structures in orbit about the gate.  Four rings organized the structures in different orientations and orbits about the gate.  All of this traffic was controlled by computer and sensory system unparalleled in human space.  And all was going normally about the gate until the unexpected happened.

The message drone flew through the facet into Sol system, unannounced and unplanned for.  Controllers yelled emergency orders into the com link while the traffic computers rerouted ships from their destination facets, keeping them out of the path of the drone.  Chase craft caught the drone before it struck dead on into a factory complex on the Theta ring.  Moments after the drone was caught its information was relayed to the Sol System Combined Command Station in orbit within the Alpha Ring.

Moments later the military apparatus of the human race was put into motion.  Traffic was rerouted so that couriers could transit to other systems, warning them of the danger.  The information was transmitted at light speed toward the centers of power within the systems.  All carried the same message.  Something horrible had happened in the Horus system.  And all possible resources were to be gathered to find out what.

Chapter 2

“Lucille,” called the voice from downstairs.  “Breakfast’s ready.”

“Coming mother,” yelled the slender brunet as she rose from her bed.  Not as convenient as on her ship, where her steward would have breakfast waiting in her wardroom.  But no place brought back the memories of good meals in the morning like home.

Lucille Yamamoto, Lucky Lucille as she was called in the fleet, pulled on some comfortable shorts and a real cotton shirt, luxuriating in the feel before running her hands through her short black hair.  Sometimes she missed the long lustrous length of her youth, but shoulder level with no bangs was much more practical aboard a ship, where changes in gravity could throw hair into vision at a moment’s notice.  Most men who met her off duty said her hairstyle was cute, though they wouldn’t tell her that if they saw her in full battle dress.

Bounding down the stairs she took in the aroma of omelets and steak and kidney pies, a family favorite.  Her eyes took in the vista at the rear of the house, where four meter tall windows let onto a view of the Strait of Georgia, the mid-morning sun glinting brightly off the water.  This house had been in her family for generations, which was why they were still allowed to live in the otherwise pristine wilderness of Vancouver Island.  Pristine except for the metropolis of Vancouver, twenty kilometers to the south.  The Earth had been turned into parkland in the last two centuries.  And while humans were allowed to roam the parklands at will, the price of all the progress was that most of the inhabitants of Earth lived under the ground.  Or in the sixty of so megalopolises scattered across the globe.

“Sleep well, dear?” asked Vanda Nagoya Yamamoto.  Lucille nodded as she smiled at her mother, loving the very sight of the small Amerasian woman who stood before her.  Still a youthful eighty-nine, she radiated good health and would live for over a century longer with any luck.

“She’s finally up,” said a voice behind her.  “The navy teach you to sleep the day away?”

“The navy hardly let’s its commanders sleep at all,” she said as she turned to face her smiling father.  “That’s why we sleep so much on leave.”

He was dressed in his gardening smock and had no doubt eaten his morning meal hours before.  He looked much younger than his ninety-four years.  Part of that she knew was because of his rebirth after his accidental death a few years ago.  Part of it was the natural spirit that dwelled within the man.  She knew some people thought those brought back were soulless creatures.  That humans were meant to die once and only once.  She would have challenged those people to let one of their own go when a clone could be grown and reintegrated with the memories of the loved one.  She would also have challenged them to call her father a soulless creature to her face.  She would have punished them for that challenge.

She was in his arms in an instant.  Once again a little girl hugging her daddy.  Louis patted her on the back as he gripped her tightly.

“You’ve another week to sleep in, if I’m right,” he said, holding her away from him so he could look at her.  As if he had never seen her before.  “You’re beautiful, child,” he said.

Lucille shook her head negative.  She knew her dad would think she was beautiful if she were covered with mud.  While many men had been attracted to her olive skin, emerald green eyes and athletic build, she had always thought of herself as thin and gangly.  Her hands and feet were too large for her body, while her breasts were too small, and she hated the freckles on her nose that refused to go away.  But she had always been hard on herself.

“Hey everyone,” said her older brother, Larry, running into the room.  He and his family were staying for Lucille’s visit, since she was off planet most of the time and they didn’t get see her often.

“I just saw on the trivee that there’s some kind of emergency brewing in the outer system.”

“What kind of emergency?” asked Vanda, pulling another plate of breakfast from the processor.

“They weren’t saying,” said Larry.  “Civilian news services are reporting some kind of uproar among the military.  But as usual government sources are saying nothing.”

“Shit,” said Lucille, as her com implant chimed in with a urgent call.  “I’ll be right back.”

Running up the stairs to her room she thought of what might be going on that would require the recall of a ship’s captain who was on leave while her ship was undergoing a refit.  Something important, linked with whatever was going on in the outer system.

She placed her thumb on the locking mechanism of the hardened briefcase she carried with her always when not aboard ship.  The lock sprang open and the lid slid back, revealing a state of the art com center and computer system.  Another touch of her thumb activated the system which immediately linked with her com implant, making sure only its authorized user was accessing it.

“Captain Lucille Yamamoto,” said the unit in direct link to her brain.  “Stand by for important communication.”

Suddenly she found herself standing in virtual conference room, in full uniform and surrounded by other vessel commanders.  She recognized some of them.  Carter of the battleship Nelson. Chang of the battle-cruiser Courageous. Swenson of the light cruiser Hanoi, leading an entire cruiser squadron.  Admiral Fletcher, once her CO on the old North America.  All stood at rapt attention as another figure began to take form in front of them.  A tall distinguished figure in the ornate uniform of the Terran Commonwealth Fleet Commander.

“I’m sure you all know who I am,” said Grand Admiral Pierre LaClerc.  “And you know I wouldn’t have called you here unless there was good reason.  I apologize to those of you who have had your leaves cut short.  But we face a crisis of immense proportions.”

An enormous representation of the Universe appeared in place of the admiral, in this virtual world seeming to spread out to infinity.  A red border to give the officers a reference highlighted the Milky Way.  Slowly the great sphere of the Universe turned, as the view swept in to the great wall of galaxies billions of light years distant.

“Galaxy M98735,” said the voice of the admiral.  “An unimaginable distance through normal space.  The blink of an eye through the gate link.  Six known gate portals.  Five leading to systems with habitable worlds.”

The view moved in through the floating sea of stars, centering on a single yellow dwarf in one of the spiral arms.  Closer still, passing gas giants and belts of asteroids until a beautiful blue-green world filled the screen.

“The planet Horus, for which the system is named.  A vibrantly alive planet.  Perfect for colonization.  A colony was planted there seven standard years ago.  The industrial base had been established in space.  Defenses were planted in orbit, on both moons and around the gate.  Fifteen million people called this system home.”

The view swept in past the enormous orbital factories, the great space docks and a huge fort.  In it moved, until it hovered above a moderately sized city made up of smallish individual buildings, the largest a hundred or so floors tall. Smaller houses made up the extensive suburbs.  What space they must enjoy, thought Lucille.  That was the major reason humankind kept expanding.  People wanted their room, and the freedom to enjoy it.

Suddenly Lucille noticed the past tense of the presentation.  People called the system home.  She wondered what that meant.  To the people and to the Human Alliance.

“Horus is under the jurisdiction of the Martian Consortium, who financed the planting of the colony.  The main claim to fame of the planet is the extensive ancient ruins which pepper the desert areas of the world.”

The view moved into those desert areas, to enormous pyramids as large as the largest archology on Earth, made of a gleaming black material that showed very little of the ravages of time.  Half buried cities swept into view, their super hard materials showing more wear and tear than the pyramids, but still remarkably intact for being exposed to desert erosion for over forty million years.

“The Horus system’s gate has a direct connection to the gate in orbit around Sol System.  Twelve hours ago a courier drone came through the gate from Horus.  While the message was somewhat garbled one thing was clear.  Horus as we knew it no longer exists.  Something terrible has happened there and the human colony has been wiped out.  We have since sent several scout vessels through the gate.  None have returned.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the admiral.  “Those of you on your vessels are ordered to proceed to the Sol System Gate at best possible speed.  We are reinforcing our defenses here and in other vital systems.  The other governments, both in and out system, have been contacted and are gathering their forces for defense of their people.  Those of you who are on leave, or have vessels undergoing refit, are to report to your ships at greatest speed.  Transport is being arranged as we meet.  Ships in dock are being hurriedly readied.”

“Commanders of the fleet.  In an hour a reconnaissance in force will go through the gate into the Horus system.  This will leave our own gate only thinly defended, and whatever struck at Horus may come through our own gate from any number of portals.  The Earth Commonwealth, Mars Consortium, and the Belt League are all gathering forces to send to the gate.  Forces are being recalled from other systems, so that all of the Solar System powers will be able to meet this unknown threat.  You will receive further briefings on board your ships during your voyage as information becomes available.  And hopefully final orders when you are in proximity of the Sol System Gate.  Good luck and Godspeed.”

Lucille found herself back in her room at her parent’s home, the momentary disorientation of virtual conferencing confusing her for just an instant.  She knew in the back of her mind that a transport was on the way here.  She had about ten minutes to get ready.  She threw on a working uniform knowing she would have time to change into something more suitable on the transport.  Dressed, she rushed downstairs to say her goodbyes.

Her mother’s eyes teared over as she saw her daughter in uniform.  Her father frowned, then walked to her and enfolded her in a bear hug.  Even Larry waited to give her a hug.  All had realized that the leave was over and their daughter, their sister, was going into harm’s way.  They knew better than to ask her what was going on or where she was going.   She would tell them if she returned and when the mission was declassified.

Moments later the transport landed on the great expanse of lawn in front of the house.  Ducted fans lowered it easily to earth without causing damage to the tender grass.  The landing struts barely sank into the sward as the fans continued to support the majority of the twelve-meter long vehicle’s mass.  A door in the side of the craft swung open and a short ladder extended to the ground.

With a last wave at her family Lucille ran to the transport and climbed in.  The pilot turned to greet her as she got into her seat and buckled in.  He lifted easily into the air in a slow arch, shifting the fans to give some forward thrust.  Lucille took a last look through the one-way transparent skin of the transport as the vehicle swung over the house and out above the Strait of Georgia.  It climbed higher until her parent’s house looked like a child’s toy.

Lucille was pushed back into her seat by G forces as the pilot kicked in the fusion engines.  They climbed at a high angle of attack, crossing the North American Continent at Mach 15 and moving down toward the equatorial regions of the planet.  She looked down at the landmass below her through the light cover of clouds.  The small brown of sections of desert blended with the white of snow-capped mountains and the great green expanses of grasslands.  Great rivers cut through the grasslands, becoming ever wider as they approached their destinations.  To the east the green turned a darker shade as grassland gave way to forest.

“We’re heading to the F Dock section of the Ring,” said the pilot as they continued to climb into space.

Far ahead, around the curve of the Earth, she could see reflection of sunlight on the wire thin ring that surrounded the Earth around the Equator.  Wire thin from here, she knew.  It would increase in apparent size as they drew closer.  F Dock Section was one of the many military docks along the ring, this one the closest to the Amazon Tether.  She had been there before, though on this trip she had come down from E Dock near the Quito Tether.

“ETA, fifteen minutes forty seconds,” said the pilot, swinging his chair around.  “Would you like some refreshments, captain?”

“No thank you,” said Lucille, continuing to scan the world below.

“I would have thought an officer like you would have seen enough of this by now to be bored with the view.”

Lucille glanced down at her command badge, the crossed spaceships of a line officer, then up at the pilot with a smile.

“Only someone soul dead would not enjoy this kind of view.  Don’t tell me you don’t get a rush every time you fly above it?”

“Of course, ma’am,” said the pilot.  “How could anyone not get a rush looking down on the old home world?”

She noticed that he wore the twin silver bars of a Lieutenant JG on his flight suit collar.  Not a newbie then this one.

“That was a nice house your folks live in,” he continued, leaving the ship to pilot itself unless he was needed to override something.  “I would love to live out in the wilderness like that.”

“Where did you grow up, lieutenant?” she asked as she looked out over the world.  The dense green of jungle was now below; split from east to west by a monster of a river system that she knew was the Amazon.  Now the ship was angling higher, climbing to reach the geosynch orbit of the Ring.

“Right down there in the old New York Metroplex,” answered the younger man.  “In the Philly subsection.”

Lucille looked down as the man talked, taking in the far off sweep of the super-city the pilot had named.  Four billion inhabitants, almost twenty million of them from alien species, crowded together in the largest city humankind had ever built.  Stretching from the old State of Maine down to the tip of the Florida Peninsula, it was the center of Earth government as well as the undeclared seat of human power throughout the Universe.

“No wonder you were so attracted to our family home,” she said, looking back into the young man’s eyes.  “Why not move to a colony?  At least then you can stake a claim to as much land as you can use.”

“I’ve thought of it,” he said.  “Maybe I would miss that mess of a city down there.  It’s not as bad as some people think.  Plenty of parkland and plenty to do.  Just a lot of other people wanting to do it at the same time.

“But I want to serve my hitch first,” continued the pilot.  “Someday I hope to be posted to a capital ship.  Then I’ll have a chance to really see the Universe.”

“There’s more of it to see than you can imagine,” she told him.  “And sometimes a Cap doesn’t go anywhere.  It all depends on what the upper brass decide to do with it.”

“But you command a Cap, don’t you?” asked the pilot.  “A battleship?”  Lucille could feel his excitement.  That was the dream of most that entered the officer corps.  Command of a squadron or fleet seemed too high an achievement, unattainable by most.  But a Captaincy.  Now that was something that most officers could believe in, even though only five percent of those entering as an ensign might achieve such rank.

“The Navarin’s a great ship,” she told him.  “She’s no battleship.  But the thrill of commanding a battle-cruiser is the greatest thing going.”

“A battle-cruiser.  Quite a bit more to handle than a surface to orbit transport.”

“Just keep with it, son.  And someday you might have a battleship at your command.”

The pilot smiled at her, a smile that turned to a frown as an alarm went off.  He turned his seat back to the front as he busied himself with the control of the ship.

“We’re coming up on the ring now, ma’am.  ETA one minute five seconds.”

G forces pulled her forward as the pilot vectored thrust through the nose tubes.  Unlike her own ship he could put a couple of gees on decel without having to turn the ship.  The ring loomed large in the view-plate now.  It still seemed thin when the perspective of the great arch around the planet was taken into the picture.  But that kilometer of circumference added up to over a hundred trillion cubic meters of interior space, and hundreds of millions of people lived and worked on the structure.

A dozen large vessels were nosed into the docks of F section, leaving enough open dock to accommodate a hundred vessels.  Their small ship headed up the ring a couple of kilometers, toward an opening leading into the structure.  With an expert touch the young pilot had them through the opening and floating toward the deck of the hanger, picking out an empty spot near one of the many hatches.

The ship touched down and an access tube snaked its way from the wall.  A thumping sound indicated it mating to the ship.  Lucille gave her pilot, the master of his small vessel, a quick salute before she grabbed her bags and waited for the door to open.  The pilot returned the salute with a smile.  She was sure he didn’t have a priority transport like this every day.

The hatch to the transport swung open and she launched herself through the tube into free fall, twisting expertly to plant her boots on the floor as she floated into the room beyond.  Her boots gripped the surface as she looked around, trying to orient herself.

“Captain Yamamoto?” asked a Lieutenant JG, walking quickly into the room with the sure steps of one who lived in zero gee.

“I’m Yamamoto,” answered Lucille.

“This way please, ma’am.  Your shuttle is waiting.  The others are already aboard.”

Lucille nodded her head as she fell into step beside the man.  Her boots gave a slight resistance with each step as they pulled loose of the surface.  The lieutenant slowed for her, allowing her to get her space legs back.  The captain wondered who they were, the ones who were waiting on her.  She would have time to find out, she knew.  It was a twelve-hour flight out to the refueling slip where her ship waited.

*    *    *

Admiral Miguel Roca tapped into the flag circuit as he scanned the great silvery sphere of the gate ahead.  The orbiting beacons were bright on his tactical display, and to his view the millions of portals of the gate were marked with clear signposts of their destinations.  The blinking circle sweeping around toward his position was the gate to Horus, the destination of his force.

Yamato, his flagship, stood out ten thousand kilometers from the surface of the sphere in a retrograde orbit that brought it around the gate opposite of the direction of spin.  The rest of the ships of his command shared that orbit as they waited for their windows to open for the jump to the potentially hostile system.  Four more of the twelve hundred meter long battleships were in that string, along with three smaller battle-cruisers, four heavy cruisers, six light cruisers and eleven destroyers.  It was the largest force that could be gathered at short notice, he knew, and would leave the gate with little in the way of mobile forces until other ships arrived.  He would have preferred a half dozen more battleships, but such could not be helped.

Not that the Solar System was not well defended.  The almost two hundred structures of the Alpha Ring orbited behind him at almost nineteen thousand kilometers, including a number of heavily armed forts and other military installations.  And the other three rings, even further back, carried heavy armament as well.  Anything that popped out of this gate unexpectedly would receive a warm welcome.

“Admiral,” came the voice of the ship’s captain through the link.  “All systems ready here.  Capacitors fully charged and tubes loaded and programmed for maximum spread.”

“Prepare to jump on this sweep,” he fired back at the ship’s commander.  The other ships of the force reported in as well over the net, using the link that merged the admiral’s mind with the flag computer system to amplify his memory and information processing facilities to godlike proportions.  All the ships had their orders and would jump in sequence now that the orders had been given.

First in line was the Guderian.  The sleek six hundred and fifty meter length of the destroyer looked positively fragile compared to the heavier ships waiting to follow her lead.  But it was her job to scout the way and one ship had to lead.  With a flare of fusion fire the ship thrust forward under computer control.  Ten gees Roca saw on his display, the maximum the crew could take out of the acceleration tanks.  But they would be going in hot and the crew had to be at ready stations, even if they had to take the crushing force of tens times their weight in their accel couches.

Within an instant the Guderian was into the hexagonal portal, gone in a flash of light from the Solar System.  Three seconds later the portal flared again as the message drone from the destroyer came back with its view of the early part of the transit.

Admiral Roca tapped into the drone as soon as it appeared.  The view startled him for a second.  The skin of the Guderian was rupturing under the lasers and particle beams of an assault, while the cries and raw emotions of the crew came clear through the circuit.  Then the transmission cut off as the drone entered the portal on the return trip to the Solar System.

“All units on red alert,” he ordered through the link.  “Action imminent.”

Acknowledgment sped through the circuit as all of the linked entities that were the crews of the ships signaled their understanding.  Pittsburg was next in line and the transits after her would be fast and furious.  The secondary engines on the light cruiser flared fire as she sped toward the portal.  Before she was halfway there the engines on the Europa fired up, putting the battleship on an intercept course that would lead her through the portal seconds after the transit of the Pittsburg.

Royal Oak started forward as Pittsburg disappeared in transit.  Like a well-orchestrated dance the ships were going through on a timed assault, bringing the most firepower to bear in the shortest possible time.

Our turn, thought the admiral, as the Europa disappeared through the portal.  He felt the weight on his body as it was pushed back into the accel couch.  The padding on his battle armor actually took up most of the force.  Roca hated the heavy equipment every crewman was forced to wear into a hostile situation.  He had hated wearing it when he was an ensign, fifty years before.  And he still hated it, even though it would allow him to move around the ship while it was thrusting at five gees, and would protect him in the event of a hull breach and the speeding shrapnel it would fling around the guts of the vessel.

Nav readouts dominated his tactical display as Yamato moved toward the portal.  The margin of error was minimal, and though it didn’t happen often ships had been known to stray from the optimal passage path far enough to be pulled into the two dimensional gravity well along the edge of each portal.  And contact with those wells meant obliteration as the ship was crushed to a point source and sucked out of the Universe.  More common were the gravitational fluctuations that could reach through the hull and kill a crewman with the sudden pull of twenty of more gee forces.  Which was why most transits were made with the crew safe in the confines of the acceleration tanks.  But the tanks limited the ability of the crew to react to an emergency situation.

Then all time for thought was over as the Yamato entered the portal.  The admiral felt as if he was being stretched all over the Universe, existing yet not existing, everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

*    *    *

Disorientation always followed a transit.  Disorientation of all cognitive systems, organic or crystalline.  Quantum fluctuations within the system took time to stabilize.  Two to three seconds for organics.  Up to fifteen seconds for crystalline systems.

Yamato found herself coming out of the gate with the velocity she had gained in the Solar System and with the minimal of computing resources on line.  Only the backup organic systems known as human beings were operational at all, and even they were confused by the situation they were thrust into.  That was the reason behind the thousands of hours of training all had received, as fingers flew across keyboards automatically, arming defensive systems while looking for targets to acquire.

Admiral Roca reeled under the input of the Yamato’s sensor systems without the aid of its computer to sort out the flood of information.  Gamma radiation impacted all over the outer crystalline layer of the ship’s hull, the layer that served as the all-around sensory system for the vessel.  The skin was set to passive sensor at the moment so the actives would not interfere with the full stealth mode the ship was in.  All radiation of any type was absorbed by the hull, making the ship almost invisible to any kind of sensory system.  That the system was not capable of hiding the ship from the close proximity sensors of the enemy was made apparent to Roca when the ship shuddered under the assault of a particle beam.

Then the view cleared to his mind’s eye as the ship’s computer systems came back online.  Within microseconds the confusion was sorted and he had a clear view of everything going on around the ship.  The enemy was identified, and with sinking heart the admiral realized it was their own space forts that were firing on his force.  Each carried the firepower of several battleships and the four forts were more than capable of giving his squadron a battle that they might not win.  In his secondary processing mode he wondered what had happened to turn the forts against him.  Have the crews gone mad?  Or has an alien force taken the forts intact?

A matter-antimatter warhead went off a hundred kilometers from Yamato, flooding space with more gamma radiation.  Europa was being hit with a powerful particle beam of antimatter, annihilating a small section of her hull as the explosion sent the great ship into a spin.  Royal Oak was launching interceptor missiles at incoming warheads, blasting them from space in bright bursts of terrible energies.  The Battleship Espania, come in behind the flag, was still in disoriented state and the other ships launched interceptors or covered her with their light amp rings until she could come on line.  And the Battleship Pacifica was just coming out of the portal.

Of the Destroyer Guderian there was no sign, and the admiral was sure it had been completely destroyed as soon as it had entered the system.  The Light Cruiser Pittsburg was still fighting, launching missiles in ripple fire at the nearest space fort while its light amp rings picked off the incoming missiles with invisible flares of coherent radiation.  Almost all of the missiles were picked up.  One swooped in close enough to blast radiation into the forward light amp ring, fusing the crystalline structure and putting it out of the fight.  Within seconds another high gee missile hit Pittsburg in her forward section.  This one was a true ship killer, blasting with a thousand megatons of force as the antimatter warhead went off.  The forward hull ruptured under the blast as searing heat and deadly radiation poured through the ship, destroying systems and killing crew in an instant.  The dead hull of the ship went spinning off under the force of the explosion.  Several missiles headed her way veered off toward other targets, killing velocity as they attempted to vector onto living ships.  Others continued after the light cruiser, ripping into her with annihilating fury, blasting the hull into pieces large and small that went spinning off in many directions.

The Heavy Cruiser Sao Paulo was coming through, to be followed by the battle-cruisers of the force.  Europa was taking a pounding, as was Espania, and Roca could see the futility of trying to defend against the fire of the forts.

“All ships,” he ordered over the circuit.  “Systems are to be set to offensive priority.  Repeat.  Systems to offensive priority.  Hit them with everything you’ve got.”

Yamato bucked from several hits as her attitude thrusters struggled to line her nose up with the nearest fort.  Particle beams and lances of coherent energy reached to strike at the fort, and the fort sprayed reflective emulsions and reordered its protective outer skin to absorb or reflect as much radiation as possible.  The Yamato’s light amp rings switched across the frequency range as they fired.  One moment they fired gamma rays, the next visible light and the next X-rays, trying to get in a microsecond of maximum damage before the station adjusted.  Roca sweated the next few seconds that seemed like an eternity to his heightened processing speed.  The New York had come through and the BC was attracting some of the attention to itself.

The nose of the Yamato lined up on the fort, leading it slightly to bring all weapons to bear.  The kinetic energy cannon fired its multi-ton projectile the length of the ship through its magnetic acceleration tube, sending the dead weight of the warhead on an intercept course toward the fort.  A ship would try to maneuver away from the path while the projectile tried to adjust its course.  The fort had limited maneuverability, which made it a sitting duck at close range to the heavy projectile heading toward it at a third of light speed. Secondary engines fired in response to the shot of the cannon, keeping the ship on station so the recoil would not put it out of line.

The fort launched its own projectile, almost to the micron of the launch of Yamato’s, on an intercept course that brought them into each other a thousand kilometers from the station.  A blast of white fire marked the intersection as the small antimatter warheads of both contacted the matter containing them.  Sensors were blinded for a second before the heavy gamma particles cleared the local space.

As the sensory window opened up Yamato spit her next attack at the fort.  Her ten forward facing tubes ripple fired a salvo of missiles, each accelerated the length of the ship from the stern missile room.  Within ten seconds she had let off twenty of her missiles, the first reaching target before the middle of the salvo left the tube.  One blew before impact, the victim of concentrated light amp.  Beams touched the rest but the fraction of a second of contact was not enough to defeat their built in defensive systems.  And the range was too close for the fort’s interceptors to launch before impact.

Nuclear fire walked across the width of the five-kilometer fortress, vaporizing parts of the hull, cracking the crystalline structure of light amp projectors and fusing the micro circuitry of the structure.  The force imparted to the fort pushed it from its orbit in a tumble.  It almost moved enough to get out of the way of the oncoming kinetic projectile.  Almost.

Six tons of projectile hit at one third the speed of light, imparting the force of a fifty thousand megaton warhead into its target.  At impact the small antimatter warhead ruptured it magnetic containment, adding another couple of thousand megatons to the equation.  The fortress had never been built to handle forces of such magnitude.  Nothing built by humankind had.  The station disintegrated into billions of particles, the largest a chunk massing a hundred thousand tons, the smallest myriads of subatomic particles.

Roca shifted his focus from this single attack back to the entire fleet action.  Only one of the forts was still operational, though many of the smaller orbital weapons platforms controlled by the forts were still online.  Missiles were continually being launched at his ships.  As he watched in horror a ship killer hit the battle-cruiser Repulse, blasting through her hull and sending her on a spin into the gate sphere.  Particle beams from a trio of platforms played across the hull of the Espania, rupturing her light amp rings on one side and blinding her defenses.  A quartet of missiles slammed into her blind side, cracking the ship open from stem to stern to the hard vacuum of space.

But more ships were coming through the gate, adding their firepower to the melee.  Platform after platform was knocked out and the last fort blew up as antimatter particle beams penetrated into her power core.  Then, as suddenly as the battle had begun it was over.

“Damage report?” ordered Roca over the link.  The figures started coming back to him in an instant.  Not as bad as he would have expected, taking on the entire gate defenses of the Horus system.  But still horrible enough to sicken any commander.  Europa and Espania totally destroyed with all hands. Along with the Pittsburg.  Royal Oak and Pacifica over fifty percent damage.  While his own flag, Yamato, along with the battle-cruisers New York and Sicilia, as well as the heavy cruiser Sao Paulo, had suffered just under fifty percent.  Other ships with lesser damage.

The Repulse still contained living crew, but Roca looked on helplessly as the ship fell slowly into the gate.  There was nothing he or any of the other ships of his force could do.  Repulse impacted the gate between facets, folding up into itself under the pull of the two dimensional gravity source.  Fierce fire blossomed for a moment as the antimatter aboard the ship breached containment.  Fire and all was sucked into nothingness in an instant as the gate sphere continued to rotate as if nothing had happened.

“Dallas,” ordered Admiral Roca over the link to the still intact heavy cruiser.  “Commodore Ferris is to command the force vectored to Horus itself.  Light Cruisers Hanoi and Kingstown, along with Destroyers Gomez, Murphy and Fuchita will form up on Dallas and accompany her to planetary orbit.  Osaka, the light cruiser Hanow and destroyers Tevalis and Rommel will scout out the belt mine installations.  Everyone stay in touch and be alert.”

Roca settled back for a second as he watched the ships vector to their formations, then fired up their primary drives to boost toward their destinations.  He would have liked to have sent at least a couple of capital ships to the planet.  But all that he had were too damaged to do more than limp back to an air dock and sit in for a few months of repairs.

I’ve succeeded in part of my mission, he thought.  He had taken the Horus terminus of the gate and held it in force.  More ships would come through as they came available.  But he had failed to discover what had happened.  All that remained of the forts that had closed off the system were blasted, radioactive remnants.  Not enough for even the greatest of detectives to formulate a theory.

Thinking of radiation he realized he was feeling a little sick himself and his self-diagnostic showed that he had taken far above the safe dosage of rads during the battle.  He focused for a second on his nanobot healing system, making sure the little guys were doing their jobs and repairing his cells before deterioration reached the point where he might need to check into a healing chamber.  The admiral had too much to do, and too many responsibilities, to be so inconvenienced.