The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #5: Liberation Read online

  “Still, it begs the question: ‘What did happen?’… or more to the point ‘What WILL happen?’” Cat finished for Ken. “The evidence would suggest quite a battle took place to destroy planets, obliterate and rearrange moons…”

  “As well as shifting some of the planetary orbits,” Jason added. “The question has to be ‘What of these things happened on their own’ and ‘what of these things happened as a result of our conflict with the Syndicate?’”

  “Exactly,” Cat agreed.

  Hikaro folded his arms and leaned back against the conference table. His face was a study of contemplation. He shifted as the door behind him opened. A steward was just beginning to bring lunch into the room. In a few minutes members of the senior staff from each of the ships would to join their respective captains. Cat had wanted to get a sense of each of the captains before the others arrived.

  The captain of the Exeter finally spoke up. “The Agur’s instructions were to defend Earth. Our problem is we don’t know what type of attack we are defending from and when. How do we anticipate and defend against such a broad threat?”

  Cat smiled. She had been thinking exactly the same series of thoughts. The difference was she saw a clear answer. “We don’t. We have the advantage of knowing what the ‘before and after’ looks like for this battle. All we need to do is analyze the changes between this system and the Sol system we know from the future.” She paused to address the ship’s AI. “Yorky, have you been monitoring the conversation?”

  “Of course Admiral. I am prepared to carry out the requested analysis but if I may suggest… let’s catalog the observed differences and then split the analysis with each of the ships in the taskforce. That way we take better advantage of our more limited cognitive capacity.”

  Ben, who had just entered the conference room, snickered.

  Yorky briefly dimmed the intensity of the room’s lighting system to signal his displeasure. “If my ‘Avatar’ would ever like to take a warm shower again he will refrain from chuckling in response to my suggestions.”

  Seeking to head off another round of good-natured, but ultimately counterproductive, needling Cat cleared her throat. “Ladies and gentlemen… if you would take your seats.”

  Chapter Eight – The Edmund Fitzgerald

  Nicked-Tail was exhausted. It had been twenty-eight hours since he had slept. The fact that he needed to sleep and hadn’t known what exhaustion felt like for the better part of two decades did little to ease his foul mood. The MS Tsunami and the taskforce of ten Syndicate ships had spent the last sixteen hours locked in a swirling purple maelstrom that defied their attempts to escape. Unwilling to trust his subordinates, he had stayed on the bridge the entire time despite having finished his shift less than one hour into the maelstrom. In his mind, the exhaustion was yet another of the indignities visited on him personally by the Agur… an indignity for which Nicked-Tail had every intention of holding the Agur and the GCP accountable.

  A wave of unsettling nausea washed over the ship with several of the Modos under his command actually disengaging and falling off their Suhtii hosts. The Suhtii would keen softly and pick their masters up from wherever they fell. The Modos in question were typically a deep and shameful color of green as a result of swooning like infantile fry.

  “Report!” He barked sharply.

  “We have emerged from the hyperfield vortex,” a young lieutenant said quickly.

  “OF COURSE WE HAVE EMERGED, IDIOT! Now give me a report of where we are and how many enemy ships are with us… or is providing useful information too difficult for you?” The last was asked in a softer, more dangerous tone.

  “No sir! I mean ‘Yes sir’,” the flustered lieutenant continued.

  “Well?”

  The lieutenant continued to scan his console and tweaked various controls for a second before looking up at his captain. The terror in his eyes was plain to see. “Sir, I can’t tell you where we are. None of the stars make any sense. We would have had to travel millions or even billions of years back in time for the stars to have changed positions this far. The patterns are much closer together. This galaxy and this universe is much younger than the one we left.”

  Nicked-Tail sat back. As strange as it sounded it made sense. The Agur had said they would be sending the combatants far from where they were. ‘Into the very distant past’ was certainly consistent with that description. Nicked-Tail was exhausted and so he began to do something that sent shockwaves of abject terror through the bridge crew. He began to laugh uncontrollably.

  ***

  Admiral Bud Faragon stroked the day-old stumble of his beard. As far as he could tell, the message from the Agur had been broadcast to every ship, in every fleet, everywhere, at the same time… period. If you had asked him before it happened, he would have said the feat was impossible. And yet the Agur had pulled it off.

  The message was simple. “The war is over.”

  When the message arrived every ship in the Admiral’s taskforce had been dumped unceremoniously out of whatever hyperfield conduit they were in. Since that moment the very fabric of the universe had changed. Try as they might, no ship in the sector the admiral was in had been able to form a stable hyperfield bubble capable of FTL movement. The hyperfields themselves formed and functioned as one would expect. This was evidenced by the continued functioning of shields and power containment systems… but try to make a big enough hyperfield to move a ship through and the power requirements increased by so many orders of magnitude as to become physically impossible. As far as his tech people could determine it would take every sun in every galaxy to produce enough energy to attempt it. The very laws of physics seem to have been tweaked.

  The Admiral’s task force, consisting of some three dozen ships, was trapped some 168 light years from Earth. Fortunately there were several star systems with habitable worlds within a few light years of their current position. Even the slowest ship in the taskforce, a modified heavy-Bowman could make 78% c from its sublight drives. It would take years to get where they were now headed… but get there they would.

  The only good news, as far as the Admiral was concerned, was that FTL communications appeared unaffected by whatever the Agur had done. His crew could continue to talk with and see via video links their loved once trapped in other regions of space.

  The admiral’s hand fell away from his beard. He typically only grew one when he was on vacation and had the time to keep it properly trimmed… but given the current circumstances he had the feeling time was the one thing he would have an abundance of.

  ***

  Cat continued to survey the plans developed by the taskforce. No one had any idea how long they would have before the Modos fleet arrived. No one knew precisely what the enemy would do but the general consensus was a battle would take place that resulted in the destruction of Ceres Prime which was the name given to the planet between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid belt thus formed would provide fuel for a bombardment of the inner planets, including Earth. The question then came down to how to best defend Earth from such an attack.

  The problem Cat faced was one of resources. With only a handful of ships there simply was no way to adequately cover all the possible attack scenarios that her team had been able to identify. To date they had conceived of twenty six major modes of attack along with literally hundreds of subtle variations. And this was assuming a comparison of the Sol system between the past and the future was a valid heuristic in reducing the number of option they had to consider.

  Cat suspected the real solution lay not in suppressing potential modes of attack but in managing the attack once it occurred. In the same way a martial artist used his or her opponents strength against them, Cat suspected her forces would need to do the same with the Syndicate forces.

  She was about to call Ken in for another chat about her idea when her commlink signaled for her attention.

  “Admiral,” Captain Kirkland said over the link. “I think you are going to want to report to
the bridge. We just intercepted an old-style radio transmission.”

  ***

  Randy McFarl had had better days. The ethanol condenser he had been working on was in even worse shape than the one on the Eastman farm. It had likely been thirty years since it had been overhauled and the wear across its various mechanical components was obvious. Three quarters of the bolts were so tightly frozen with accumulated rust that he had to cut them off. The remainder came loose but were hopelessly stripped in the process.

  He had spares but the fabricator from the Fitz was overburdened as it was. If the colony didn’t get the new fabricator build in the next few years they might never be able to. He toggled the transmit switch on his walkie-talkie. “Ed, you got your ears on? This is Randy over at the Hillstead place. Over.”

  “Go ahead Randy… what can I do you for?”

  “Ed, this condenser is going to be a bear. It will take me all day. I promised Janine I would stop by and look at her A/C unit. Do you think you can get over there today?”

  “No problem buddy. I can make that happen. Do you need a hand with that condenser?”

  “Thanks but I’ve got it. I should be able to meet you guys back at the fort before sundown.”

  The walkie screeched for a second before clearing. Randy heard only the last half of Ed Coulter’s reply, “… damn sure OK?”

  “Sorry buddy… you broke up on the last… please repeat.” As soon as his thumb cleared the transmit button the Walkie-talkie screeched again, only this time so loudly that Randy almost dropped it.

  “…I repeat, this is Admiral Catherine Kimbridge from the Galactic Coalition of planets calling any station. Please respond.”

  ***

  Cat stood on the bridge of the Yorktown. On the forward view screen a beautiful blue and green orb slowly rotated below them. This Venus was a far better representation of the Greek god of love then the steaming cauldron that was the Venus Cat knew. Even more surprising was the discovery that this Venus was populated by humans… humans from the late 21st century.

  “Admiral, I have Governor Edward Stevens online,” Lt. Nickels announced from the communications console.

  “Put him on screen” Cat ordered.

  Edward Stevens appeared to be a middle-aged man with a light frosting of grey on his temples and the type of hard lines on his face that came from an active outdoor life style. He wore a worn baseball cap and a red and blue flannel shirt that made him appear for all the world like a Midwestern farmer straight out of America’s farm belt. There must have been a slight delay in the image of the Yorktown’s bridge appearing in his monitor because his face that had been fixed in a somewhat blank stare suddenly lit up with a smile.

  “By God it’s true,” he said with a broad grin. “I don’t recognize the uniform but you are unquestionably human. Did the Agur teleport you here as well?”

  It was Cat’s turn to be surprised. “You’ve met the Agur?”

  “Well, not personally… is it ‘Captain?’… My father was the First Officer on the Fitz… rather… The USC Edmund Fitzgerald.”

  Ken Kirkland whistled. The United Space Command vessel known as the Edmund Fitzgerald was one of Earth’s few sublight attempts to reach another star. It had been a generation ship outfitted with enough equipment and supplies to start a human colony on another world. It was also a ship right out of legend. The Fitzgerald and its entire crew had been presumed lost when Bowman-class survey vessels had been unable to locate it along its planned flight path.

  Cat stepped a little closer to the screen. She nodded to Ken to step forward as well. “I’m Admiral Catherine Kimbridge in charge of the Galactic Coalition of Planets Yorktown taskforce. This is Captain Ken Kirkland, commander of the Yorktown itself.”

  “It’s a real pleasure to meet you both. We didn’t think we would ever see another human,” Governor Stevens said with what Cat was beginning to suspect was a trademark grin. “If it’s a ‘galactic coalition’ I assume you’ve broken the light barrier. It is definitely a real pleasure to meet you!”

  “Trust me sir,” Cat said with an equally broad grin, “It’s an unexpected pleasure on our part as well.”

  The man on the screen cocked his head a little to the side and pondered Cat’s statement for a second. “You didn’t expect to find us here. You weren’t looking for us.” He paused again. “The Agur didn’t send you back in time to rescue us. Which begs the question Admiral… why are you here?”

  “Governor,” Cat began, “It would seem we have a lot to discuss. Perhaps we can come down there to have the conversation?”

  “Actually Admiral, I’d prefer to come up to your ship. I haven’t been in space since I was a toddler. It would be nice to see the stars as my parents saw them. Can you ‘beam me up?’”

  Cat had to work hard to suppress a laugh. She looked at Ken who nodded his head. As Captain it was his place to issue invitations to visit the Yorktown. He stepped forward as he stroked his red beard in an unconscious effort to straighten it.

  “Governor I’m afraid we don’t beam people up yet… But I can send a shuttle down to pick up you and your party.”

  “Thank you, Captain. We have a small airfield just south of my position. We’ve cleared quite a bit of the vegetation from the surrounding area. I’m not sure how much of a clearing your shuttles require but we are very fire conscious down here.”

  Now it was Ken’s turn to smile. “Actually sir we use a null-gravity field generator that is a derivative of our FTL drive. We could land a shuttle in a person’s driveway and not singe a single blade of grass in their yard.”

  The Governor removed his hat and wiped his head with a bandana. “Incredible. How long will it take you to get here?”

  “Sir,” Cat began, “the Captain can have a pilot down there in half an hour. We are not big on formality here and we have a situation that is urgent to discuss. Can you and a handful of your key people be ready by then?”

  “Give me an hour Admiral. I’m going to have to pull some people in from the fields.”

  “An hour then. I look forward to meeting you in person. Kimbridge out.”

  ***

  The actual pickup took closer to an hour and a half as the governor pulled in members of his science and agricultural teams as well as the only surviving member of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s original crew, a Commander Tom Riker. All told there were six people to meet the shuttle just outside of the main settlement called Fort Pulcer.

  Commander Ben was their designated escort as the four men and two women boarded the GCP Conway. The Conway was a small run-about class shuttle designed for surface to ship operation. The Venusians, as the crew of the Yorktown has started referring to the descendants of the Fitzgerald’s crew, were in a perpetual state of awe. Even Commander Riker, who at eighty seven had spent his youth as an ensign on the Fitzgerald as it traveled through space at a leisurely 75% c, was in awe of the technological advancements in evidence onboard the shuttle.

  Anything they may have felt about the shuttle was dwarfed by what they felt as the shuttle approached the massive GCP Yorktown. Captain Kirkland had the engineering team turn on all the work lamps so the ship was bathed in light that lit up every little nook and cranny of the GCP’s flagship.

  Edward Stevens looked out the forward viewpoint and whistled. “Now that is one hell of a ship!”

  Chapter Nine – Mysteries

  Nicked-Tail scanned the conference room. The best minds at his disposal were seated about the large table. They had spent the last several days analyzing data from every available sensor looking for their enemy. At long last they had located the Sol system and therefore the planet Earth. In a surprise revelation, the Sol system had literally announced itself. Radio transmissions had been intercepted and the direction traced back to a star system some 43 light years distance. The transmissions were incredibly weak and hard to read but several seconds of clarity had revealed a startling discovery. The transmissions were English – the primary language of the en
emy.

  “We have them!” Captain Rockfish grunted as he reviewed the latest sensor data. It showed a star system with nine primary planets and a large ring of asteroids some distance beyond the last of the gas giants.

  “Atmospheric analysis seems to indicate three of the worlds plus several of the moons are candidates for life. Which one do we target?” a small female named Commander Puddle Jumper asked.

  “We destroy them all,” Nicked-Tail spat. “We sterilize the entire system. Our agents have been good enough to get us the schematics to several of weapons systems the Coalition has been using against our ships. One of them, I believe they call them ‘suicide jumpers’, opens hyperfield conduits to the ejecta stream of supermassive black holes. We bathe each of the worlds within the Sol system with enough radiation to turn their surfaces to glass and we can end humanity before it ever begins.”

  “Won’t that effectively kill our agents as well?”

  “What of it?” Nicked-Tail responded coldly.

  ***

  The view from the Yorktown’s observation deck as everything Edward Stevens had expected it to be. He had seen high resolution videos stored in the Fitz’s library computer but they could not compare to the real thing. The view was breathtaking.

  The observation deck was the icing on what had been a very nice cake. Admiral Kimbridge had personally escorted the Venusians on a tour of the starship. It was hard to believe that while almost seventy years had passed for the crew of the Fitz… the world they had left behind had aged only thirty – and yet so much had been accomplished in those thirty years. Technology and fabrication techniques gleaned from other races had literally redefined the speed at which humanity evolved technologically. He had been told that a ship like the Yorktown could be built in mere months or even weeks if enough resources could be thrown at the project. The Edmund Fitzgerald had taken five years of intensive international effort to build and another two to fully stock for its one way journey. The remarkable thing was the Fitz was less than a 20th the size of the Yorktown.