Sean Dalton - Operation StarHawks 03 - Beyond the Void Read online

  “Dad, can the classified bit,” he said in a low voice. “My clearance is high enough. You’ve come out of Nielson’s Void and whatever happened, it was big enough to knock around a whole squadron. Plus,” he added before his father could interrupt, “squadrons have five destroyers, not six. Which tells me that number six is part of a second squadron. What happened to it? Is it back in the Void, even more disabled than this one?”

  The admiral’s lean face looked suddenly old and tired. He rubbed his eyes, and the weariness in that small gesture awoke Kelly’s compassion. But he said nothing, waiting for his father to answer.

  “No, Blue Squadron is not back there,” he said at last, his voice so low Kelly had to strain to hear it. “The Sounder was my observer ship in Blue Squadron. We had engine trouble and had to pull out of maneuvers. And then, right in the middle of the action, Blue Squadron disappeared.”

  It took Kelly a moment to register what the admiral had said. “Disappeared? I don’t understand.”

  “Vanished. One moment out there. The next moment ... gone.” The admiral shook his head. “Some kind of anomaly, a rip in the fabric of space itself.”

  “Big enough to swallow four destroyers?” asked Kelly. “I know there are a few points of space interphasing. At least that’s the theory scientists postulate to explain what they are. Small ships can slip through although usually you have enough instrument trouble to warn you before you get too close—”

  “No warning,” snapped the admiral. “No propulsion drift. No excessive course corrections. No distortions registered beforehand. They all faded at the same time. Afterward, there was excessive disturbance.”

  “Enough to cause all this damage?”

  “No.” The admiral’s voice cracked and he swallowed, clenching his fists. “No, something came through that hole. It’s a door between universes perhaps. Or perhaps it’s a door between times. Maybe it’s a wormhole, although no one could find any evidence of a collapsed star in the vicinity. My God.” The admiral buried his face in his hands a moment.

  Frowning, Kelly gently put his hand on the admiral’s shoulder. “You need to sit down somewhere. You’re exhausted.”

  The admiral snapped erect, shaking off Kelly’s solicitation almost angrily. “Don’t coddle me! They came through and wiped us out in minutes. Our weapons couldn’t compete. I don’t think we pierced their shielding a single time. Then they were gone. I don’t know who they are or where they come from. But if they have opened a door and if they plan to come out again, we’ve already shown them that they won’t encounter much resistance.”

  “Plus they’ve got four of our ships,” said Kelly. “What kind of vessels do they have? Did they attempt any communications with you before they opened fire?”

  “No more than Captain Lewis,” said the admiral bitterly. “I can’t give you specifics. The log recordings can show you what happened. I have copies sealed for delivery to Commodore West. Jedderson ought to see them, but he’s too far away, and we need to take action now. All I know is that I felt a crushing sense of malevolence. That’s neither scientific nor logical. But I felt it. Whoever they are, they aren’t our friends.”

  Kelly thought it over a moment, considering the implications of what might prove to be the exploratory tip of an invasion force.

  “You have my squad,” he said. “I have full crew complement. Just no ship and no equipment. We’re at your disposal, no matter what West says.”

  The admiral smiled briefly. “Still not getting along with West? You always did have trouble with authority. But I think you can be useful. We’ll need specialists when we go back.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Kelly in surprise. “I was just kidding. You aren’t planning to turn around and go straight back out there, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Dad,” said Kelly, trying to clear that grim look from his father’s face. “Your ship can barely crawl. You can’t—”

  The famous Kelly glare pinned him to the wall. “I intend to confiscate the Jefferson for investigative purposes,” said the admiral. “This isn’t a matter for bureaucratic debate. Someone has breached our galaxy, Bryan, and it’s up to us to plug that hole.”

  “Dad—”

  But the admiral was turning away. “Ah, here comes the boarding party from the Jefferson. Junior officers still wet behind the ears from the looks of them. Minus their captain.” He snorted. “All expendables. I’m surprised he didn’t send over a couple of repair drones just to be extra safe.”

  Kelly remained silent. He knew that tone of his father’s. It didn’t bode well for Captain Lewis. But the admiral was going to have to stand in line when it came to dealing with one obstinate, bull-headed dimwit of a career officer.

  “Bryan?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  The admiral looked at him in appeal. “I need you on this. You aren’t in the Fleet, so I can’t give you a direct order. You’ve already risked your life, your crew, and your ship for me today. But I need your expertise and your support.”

  Kelly studied him a moment. He couldn’t remember when his father had ever needed him. Loved him, yes. Always. But needed him? In spite of the strong feeling that he needed to know more about this situation before he let himself get mixed up in it, Kelly let a slow grin spread across his face.

  “In case you have to take the Jefferson by force?” he asked.

  The admiral stiffened. “I have the authority to commandeer any ship to my flag in an emergency. I won’t be hijacking her.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” said Kelly, and held out his hand. “Count the Hawks in.”

  * * *

  3

  The conference room of the Jefferson lacked enough chairs; its temperature thermostats were failing to kick on at a decent cycle, making the room too hot; and the science officer’s monotone made concentration difficult.

  “After exhaustive analysis of the log recordings, we have been able to determine power utilization curves of the alien vessels. Our findings indicate that they—”

  “We’ll worry later about how fast they can go,” interrupted the admiral. “I want to know where they came from.”

  The science officer sighed and shifted her gaze to Captain Lewis. The captain, however, sat glumly in his chair and glowered at the far wall. As well he should, for men with better track records than his had found themselves out of a job for lesser mistakes. The admiral had come aboard the Jefferson in dress uniform, medals blazing upon his chest, and was escorted by a full complement of adjutants. There had already been a formal ceremony of transferring the admiral’s flag to the Jefferson. Lewis had made no protest. He hadn’t a leg to stand on, and he was experienced enough to know it.

  Thus far the admiral had not spoken to Lewis any more than was necessary. He had not referred once to the fact that Lewis had nearly destroyed the helpless squadron or had nearly killed his son and his son’s crew. There had been a long moment when the two men stared at each other. The admiral’s blue eyes had been like ice, and Lewis had looked away first. Lewis’ own conscience could twist him harder than any reprimand.

  “Well?” repeated the admiral. His cultured, well-modulated voice sharped only a fraction, but it was enough to make the science officer flinch. “Any theories?”

  “Yes, sir. We first considered the idea of an invisibility device, due primarily to the fact that you encountered no anomalies prior to Blue Squadron’s disappearance. But our physics is not advanced enough to find a solution to the problem of the tremendous amount of energy necessary to render a whole squadron invisible.

  “That leaves us with the idea of a parallel universe.”

  “And an interstitial interphase. Yes,” said the admiral. He glanced at his son, and Kelly raised his eyebrows. Kelly hated conferences. He preferred to do his theorizing on the way to the action. “But it seems an erratic way of opening a door to an invasion.”

  “They may not be planning an invasion,” said the science officer. “It coul
d have been purely a reactionary move. They were startled by Blue Squadron’s passage through the door, and they—”

  “Don’t speculate where you aren’t called upon to do so,” said the admiral.

  The science officer turned red. There fell a moment of silence.

  Kelly leaned his elbows upon the table, which was marred by old coffee rings and worn, discolored patches. “As I understand it, interphasing is erratic,” he said. “Could they have—”

  “Interphasing is only one means of contact between parallel universes,” said the science officer, recovering her composure. “The more accepted theory is derived from maximal geometry, in which for every Schwarzschild black hole there is a counterpart on the other side called a white hole.”

  “Ah,” said the admiral. “We considered wormholes, at least until those devils came swarming out of nowhere. But not white holes.”

  “That won’t work,” said Kelly. “We could go in through a black hole, but they wouldn’t be able to come out at the same point. If I remember my old physics course correctly, matter can’t enter a white hole. That would mean they have to have a nearby black hole on their side in order to come into our universe.”

  “Well, there wasn’t a black hole there,” said the admiral shortly. “As for a white hole, I wouldn’t know one if I ran into it.”

  Lewis snorted to himself as though he could bear to keep quite no longer. “Mathematical poppycock,” he rumbled. “Nothing proven.”

  The science officer looked more nervous than ever. Kelly felt sorry for her, caught between the admiral and Lewis.

  “There is also the possibility of time travel,” she said. Everyone looked at her, and her gaze shifted about rapidly to avoid contact with anyone. “Of course that requires a rotating black hole. With two horizons, the space between becomes time. With each interchange, or the point of intersection between space and time—”

  Lewis snorted even louder.

  “Well,” faltered the science officer. “As I said, these are only theories.”

  “Yes, and next you will have us traveling to negative space.” Lewis spun his chair about and slapped the conference table with his palm. “Or playing with closed time loops. Poppycock, all of it! The admiral has stated there are no black holes in the vicinity. I can’t imagine maneuvers being carried out near one in any case.”

  “Unless,” said Kelly softly, watching his father’s hands, which were resting lightly upon the table, “for some classified reason that we haven’t been told, there is a manufactured black hole in Nielson’s Void for the purpose of—”

  The admiral’s left hand twitched. “Don’t go off into fantasy,” he said with irritation. “Two centuries ago, we figured out that it was not economically feasible to make stellar-mass collapsars.”

  “But not miniature ones,” said Kelly. “How about it? Has someone on the other side opened a gate into our universe, or is the Fleet busy punching holes—”

  “No!” said Captain Serula, jumping to her feet. Until now she had been silent, sitting out of Kelly’s line of vision. She still wore her crumpled uniform. She had the white, glassy look of someone operating beyond exhaustion. “We were testing weapons, not trying to enter another dimension. And why can’t we do something about what’s happened instead of just sitting here talking about it? Why aren’t we going after them, trying to help them?”

  “We will,” said Kelly. He had meant to goad his father, not this officer who must be feeling the unjustified, but understandable guilt of having been spared Blue Squadron’s fate by a fluke engine malfunction. “But we need to know what we’re up against first.”

  She blinked, and the fierceness faded from her face. In silence she sank back into her chair. Kelly glanced around to find his father glaring at him. Kelly gave him a slight shrug of apology.

  “If it is an invasion force,” said the admiral. “We must stop it at the source.”

  “And if this is just the first gateway?” asked Kelly.

  “Then we close it, and all the others.” The admiral stood up. “I want these disabled ships assisted back to Station 4. I want a direct transmission to Fleet HQ. And I want this kept bottled. No public discussion of it on Station 4 by anyone, at any level. If I know Jedderson, he’ll send out all the forces at his disposal. But in the meantime someone has to guard that area.”

  Lewis rose slowly to his feet. Craggy and stocky in build, he had to look up to meet the admiral’s eyes. “I assume that the Jefferson is being assigned the job?”

  “That’s right.”

  Lewis pulled in his chin, making his jowls fold over his collar. “We are not at full power. We were in for repairs after that skirmish on the Salukan border. We aren’t—”

  “You can move and you can fight. The ship will do,” said the admiral.

  “Sir, I respectfully protest what I feel to be—”

  “You feel to be what!” roared the admiral. “An unfair assignment? Scut duty? I don’t see guarding our galaxy from invasion as the bottom of a desirable action list. Need I add cowardice to your faults, sir?”

  Lewis turned a dark shade of crimson. “I can answer that accusation at your convenience, Admiral!”

  Kelly got to his feet, as did the others in the room. Consternation could be seen on every face. First Officer Jordan stepped up to Lewis.

  “Sir,” he said worriedly. “You can’t challenge a superior officer to a duel. Regulations specifically forbid—”

  “And etiquette is even stricter on that point,” put in one of the admiral’s better-tailored adjutants. “No officer may respond to a reprimand with a challenge.”

  Lewis clenched his fists. “You don’t have to spout the rule book at me! I know the damned thing perfectly well.”

  “Then you know that you are out of order, sir,” said the admiral sharply. “I am relieving you of the command which you show yourself unfit for. You may transfer your belongings to the ESS Dragon by 1430 hours. That’s fifteen minutes from now.”

  “You can’t do that! You can’t take my ship! By God, I’ll have you charged for this. You and that oddball son of yours think you own the Fleet, think you can do as you please, run over whom you please, and never mind those of us who came up through the ranks the hard way. You’ll—”

  The admiral made a small gesture, and Captain Lewis was cleared from the room, still shouting.

  The quiet left behind was a relief. Kelly circled the table and came to stand beside the admiral.

  “You handled that neatly,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “Made him finish himself off. He’ll probably have to take a medical leave. He probably will never command a ship again.”

  The admiral’s eyes flashed. “Medical leave, my foot. I’m having him charged with attempted murder.”

  Kelly put out his hand. “Don’t.”

  “Why not?” Then the admiral’s fierceness cooled slightly. “Because of you? Damn it, Bryan, the fact that you’re my son has nothing to do with that man’s incompetence. He destroyed a proto-class cruiser. There aren’t too many of those around. Now, don’t be a soft fool.”

  Kelly stepped back, suddenly conscious that Captain Serula had remained in the room to witness this conversation. He glanced at her, but she didn’t appear to even be listening. Her face was pensive and tight with grief.

  The admiral followed Kelly’s glance and his own expression softened. “Captain Serula,” he said with a gentleness that surprised Kelly. “I’m putting you in command of this ship. We’ll be setting course immediately for Nielson’s Void. Would you give the necessary orders, please?”

  Serula looked at him as though coming back from far away. A smile lit in the depths of her gray eyes and slowly spread to the rest of her face. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  The admiral smiled back. “If you want any specific crew members from the Sounder or any of the other ships in Red Squadron, have them come over at once. We need the best we’ve got.”

  Serula nodded and started out.
<
br />   “One other thing,” said the admiral after her.

  “Sir?”

  “Get some rest. Consider that a direct order.”

  She left, and Kelly faced his father.

  “Is Serula up to this? She looks pretty shaky to me.”

  “Nonsense. She’s a seasoned officer, as tough a commander as they come. She’ll bear up.”

  Kelly had his doubts, but his father’s tone left no room for further discussion. Excusing himself, Kelly headed out into the corridor, took a few wrong turns, and finally managed to cross paths with Captain Lewis, on his way to the teleport bay. A young yeoman struggled to carry the captain’s gear, and Lewis walked alone, avoided by the gazes of his crew as he passed them in the corridor.

  “Captain Lewis!”

  At Kelly’s shout Lewis dragged his slumping shoulders erect and turned like an old bear at bay. He waited until Kelly caught up with him. At close range, his small eyes glittered.

  “Come to rub it in?” he said gruffly. “How many officers have you broken between the two of you? I remember Commodore Santini, one of the finest men who ever lived. We were at Academy together. You mutinied, turned his crew against him, and ruined him in the last years of his career.”

  The attack hit home. Kelly frowned to hide it, but Lewis had seen. He bared his teeth.

  “I stood at court-martial,” said Kelly defensively. Inside he felt the old weariness. Would he never stop defending his actions in the Battle of Capellstran? Would he never stop paying for having been right? “I was exonerated of all charges. Santini wasn’t. The investigations were thorough.”

  “They were rigged,” said Lewis. “All the old-line officers knew it. That’s why you dropped out of the service after your trial. You knew what would happen to you under another commander.”

  “That’s untrue—”

  “Oh, I know all about these old Fleet families. Generation after generation of service. The admiral thinks he’s God and you and your brother expect to inherit the universe after him.”