Stephen Berry - The Battle for Terra Two

Bator-Akal glanced up just long enough to flick Shalan-Actal over to Medical, five buildings away, then returned to his board and the self-destruct programming.

They fanned out through the motorpool, Harrison and five commandos going through the maintenance bays on into the small helipad out back. L'Wrona and S'Til went into the office, weapons ready.

"Who are you?" said L'Wrona to the thin, gray-haired man sitting at the motorpool officer's desk, polishing his wire rimmed glasses.

The stranger smiled at him blankly.

L'Wrona repeated the question in English.

"My name is Hochmeister," said the admiral, putting his glasses back on. "I thought you might come here."

John came in. "Just Hochmeister's chopper out back.

"Admiral!"

"Major," nodded the admiral. "You've brought help."

"Where's Heather MacKenzie?" asked Harrison.

The admiral shook his head. "I haven't seen her since you both went into the portal."

"Later," said L'Wrona. "Let's get out of here before they counterattack. Can we all fit aboard one aircraft?"

"Too small. We'll have to take one of the trucks."

Opening a drawer, Hochmeister took out a flat, oblong block of what looked like dull-red plastic. He handed it to L'Wrona. The Margrave's eyes widened. "It's a destruct pack-remotely keyed. If they trigger this now we're…

"The S'Cotar placed these inside the electrical junction box of every building," said the admiral. "Are these each assigned a different detonation frequency?" he asked.

"Yes. The command center just enters location and firing code," said L'Wrona.

"We've been here three minutes," said John. "Why are we still alive?"

"What do the S'Cotar do with their old?" asked the admiral.

L'Wrona frowned. "Their old? They eat them. Why?"

"I wondered why they had no respect for age. They gave me the freedom of the base. Harmless old coot, watching the big bugs.

"I took the liberty of gathering the destruct packs and putting them in the unused dumpster behind the command center." He looked at his watch. "I should think…"

"Drop!" shouted L'Wrona.

Whump! The explosion rocked the motorpool, shattering the wire mesh window behind L'Wrona, tumbling the yellow field manuals from the gray utility shelves.

Hochmeister stood, unruffled.

L'Wrona rose, extending his hand. "Captain H'Nar L'Wrona, commandingImplacable. Welcome to our war, Admiral."

Admiral and Margrave shook hands. "Welcome to our friendly little world, Captain L'Wrona."

T'Ral looked at the time. Smiling evilly, he punched into the commnet. "Commander K'Raoda," he called softly. "Wake up. We have company."

Five decks below, K'Raoda mumbled, turned over on his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head.

"Computer," said T'Ral, keying the complink, "where is the alert klaxon nearest Commander K'Raoda's quarters?"

"In corridor seven blue one-five, directly above his door," said the machine.

"Klaxon designation?"

"Seven blue one-five-six-zero."

"Mr. N'Trol," said T'Ral, turning toward the bridge engineering station, "please test battle klaxon seven blue one-five-six-zero. Three long bursts."

The firstawoooka\ brought K'Raoda out of bed. The second found him ripping his Mil A from a drawer. He was at the commpanel when the third ended, calling T'Ral.

"Disregard battle klaxon." T'Ral's voice carried the length of seven deck. "Disregard battle klaxon."

"V'org slime," hissed T'Ral's communicator. "Pig shit," it added in English.

"Better get up here, T'Lei," said T'Ral. "Scans picking up three ships just clearing jump. No ID yet, but probably our reinforcements. That gives us about one watch to prepare for visitors."

"On my way," said K'Raoda, reaching for his uniform.

"Two things," said T'Ral, relinquishing the captain's chair to K'Raoda, a few minutes later. "The skipcomm buoy's no longer putting out a mark. And Ambassador Z'Sha wants to be part of the reception for the new units."

"Skipcomm's out?" K'Raoda frowned.

"Just after those three ships arrived."

A ship could jump from any point. But the closer she jumped to strong gravitational fields-planets, stars, large moons-the greater the degree of error in the jump. All jump drives were therefore calibrated for jump at null point: that point far enough from a system's nearest large body for minimum jump error, but within reasonable distance from point of origin at sublight speeds. "Null point" was a telltale reading, not the total absence of either gravitational fields or jump error.

Employing the same principles as the jump drive, the skipcomm provided almost instant communication with any other system having a skipcomm, jumping or skipping a message to the designated receiver, treating all intervening space as a porous, two-dimensional surface. Deploying a skipcomm at null point upon entering a new system was standard procedure-Implacablehad done it when first arriving in the Terran system, over a year before. The original skipcomm had been blasted by the S'Cotar, as had its replacement. The skipcomm in question was the third, and had operated flawlessly for over eight months.

"Computer," said K'Raoda, "incidence of failure of skipcomm buoys, current model."

"One one thousandth of a percent," said the machine, speaking from the chair arm.

"Amazing coincidence," said T'Ral.

"Have we challenged?" asked K'Raoda, looking at the analysis T'Ral had run on the new ships' ion trails: the usual conical spiral rotated on the small screen.

"No. You saw from the ion patterns-they're ours."

"K'Lana," said K'Raoda to comm officer, "ship-to-ship, fleet priority channel."

"All yours, Commander."

K'Raoda spoke into the commlink. "This is K'Ronarin Confederation cruiserImplacable to unknown ships. Identify, please."

K'Raoda grimaced at the high-pitched blast from the armchair. "K'Lana, what…"

The noise ended as the young subcommander did something at his console. "Sorry. He's using old code." The comm officer looked at a telltale. "Very old-wartime code."

"Have him repeat in clear, using one-time battlecode."

"Why is he using old code, Y'Tan?" K'Raoda asked T'Ral.

"He may have been sent here direct from deep patrol, without putting into base. FleetOps has done that before."

"You'd think they'd have couriered him new code."

"There's a tendency to get sloppy with the war over."

"Ship IDs received, in clear," said K'Lana. "The S'Raq-class light cruiserNew Hope, the escort frigatesG'Lar Seven andP'Dir Four."

T'Ral gripped the back of K'Raoda's chair, knuckles whitening. "Repeat first ship."

"The S'Raq-class light cruiserNew Hope, Commander."

"Wasn't that…" said K'Raoda.

T'Ral nodded curtly. "My brother's ship," he said. "Captain P'Rin T'Ral, lost at the battle of D'Lan."

"Computer," said K'Raoda, "last known disposition of the escort frigatesG'Lar Seven andP'Dir Four."

"Assigned eight squadron, Second Fleet. Lost, presumed destroyed at the battle of D'Lan."

"Three possibilities," said K'Raoda, fingers gently drumming the chair arm. "One, it's a S'Cotar ruse. Two, those three ships are who they say they are and did what other ships did, cut off by the S'Cotar advance-hit and ran through the S'Cotar sectors. And three"-he looked his friend in the eye-"they went bad."

"You dishonor my brother's memory," said T'Ral stiffly. "P'Rin would never turn corsair."

"Y'Tan," said K'Raoda gently, laying a hand on the other's arm. "He's probably dead. Others may have…"

"Incoming task force commander calling," said K'Lana.

"I'll take it," said K'Raoda. "What's his name?"

"Captain T'Ral," he said, glancing at the Tactics Officer.

"Don't raise your hopes," said K'Raoda as T'Ral's face lit with joy. "Stay out of the pickup, monitor from your console and say nothing. Do you understand?"