Six Bits Page 6

  Close beside the moon a tiny flash of light signaled the opening of a small port-ring through which Snellen extruded an omnidirectional antenna to send the message, both in Human/common galactic and in Krane/spiral. The krane could translate readily, but a double translation left fewer opportunities for error.

  "Gunny! This is the captain. We’re about to stir up the krane… Do you have your locator lenses in place on the surface of their ship?

  "Yes sir! We have two shift-ring cutters in place and penetrator rings set up over most of their accumulator banks."

  "Be ready to fire those rings, on my command, or automatically if they light their shift-ring."

  "Yes sir!"

  “Azimus. Do you have observation ports behind every meteoroid in our vicinity?” A choked giggle rose from several of the bridge crew.

  “All but one sir!”

  “Snellen. Send the message.”

  WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

  0930 EST

  “And then he was just gone?!”

  “Yes dammit! How many times do I have to tell you people the same story?”

  In the other corner they’d just finished briefing the vice president. He looked at them dubiously, “So will this… thing, whatever it is, be able to get me too, even down here in the bunker?”

  “Your guess is as good as ours Mr. Vice President. Do you think we should swear you in as President?”

  The VP scratched his balding pate. “You don’t think he’s still alive?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Let’s wait a while… I don’t relish explaining this one to the press.”

  BRIDGE—KRANE FLAGSHIP—LIGHT CARRIER XAJION—EARTH ORBIT

  0930 EST

  Commander Kinjie again heard the buzz of an alarm message. It was from the same scout ship in the asteroid belt. The humans had moved! Because of the delay for the light signal to reach the flickership’s location in the belt they must have moved 30 minutes ago.

  Where the Hell had the Motherless oitons gone? Somewhere within thirty to sixty light minutes by the size of the flash, yet someplace at least 15 light minutes from any of the krane ships or they would have seen the arrival flash already. Why would they go anyplace 15 light minutes away? Were they going to leave the system? If so, why? Any idiot could see it was a rich system! They couldn’t know that the krane were already there… Could they?

  “Sir! Radio message from behind that moon!”

  “Behind the moon? Did that humaniform cruiser jump in back there?”

  “Sir, I’ll check sir.” Duot’s head-hands and their cilia were beginning to droop as he hunched over his instruments.

  “You’ll check! Why the Mother don’t you know from the observation ports we have back there?”

  “Um, Sir, We didn’t have an observation port behind the moon sir.”

  “Didn’t have an observation port!” Kinjie screeched, “What in the name of the Mother have you been doing?!” A sensation like trickling ice water began to run up inside the Commander’s lower shell. “Did you think this was some kind of a pleasure cruise? Have you left out any other standard measures?”

  Then the contents of the message popped up on the screens and both Kinjie’s and Quell’s cilia began writhing in fury.

  Quell hissed, “They’ve snuck into your hindmost excretory orifice!”

  “This is now a battle… get off my bridge!” Kinjie spun in his saddle, his head-hands extended to full height, “Duot, where the oiton is that cruiser? Is it behind that moon?”

  “Just an antenna on line of sight sir!”

  “I said, ‘Where the hell is it?’”

  “Sir, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t cower! Find it!”

  “Sir! Working, Sir!” Duot and several other junior officers’ head-hands swiveled back to their holocubes.

  Cold ice settled in Kinjie’s gut. The Mother-be-damned humans must have jumped behind the moon. Why? They couldn’t possibly have known he was here could they? What kind of orbit were they in? Shouldn’t they already be out from behind the moon? Could they have already located his ship? No! Xajion was too stealthy, they couldn’t have found her in just 15 minutes, but they might find her soon and he had no damned idea where they were.

  “Gueel! Locate a jump to the side of this damn planet opposite that moon, low orbit.”

  “Nonise! Pull the Flickerships.”

  “Fotayl! Message capsules to Zoaden and Yaitan, send our records and tell them we’re jumping out of the presumed line of sight of this damned humaniform cruiser.”

  A thrumming sound like a god beating a huge barrel signaled the back-shifting of the flickerships into their berths.

  Duot timidly turned his saddle and said weakly, “Commander, the local humans have been bathing us with microwave radiation. We may be pretty easy to find.”

  Kinjie didn’t hear. “Gueel! As soon as you’ve located, jump us the hell out of here!”

  BRIDGE—HUMANIFORM CRUISER EXCELTOR—COMETARY EARTH ORBIT

  0935 EST

  “Captain, they’re jumping!”

  “Fire, Dammit!”

  “Captain, we fired, on auto as ordered!”

  “Did you get ‘em?”

  “Looking sir.”

  “Pray to your gods that you did!”

  BRIDGE—KRANE FLAGSHIP—LIGHT CARRIER XAJION—EARTH ORBIT

  0935 EST

  Commander Kinjie heard the boom of opening, then the powerful thrumming of the shift-ring running the length of his ship.

  But then the Mother struck Xajion a horrible blow. One that left her ringing like a massive bell. Blasting wind signaled decompression. Lights arced bright and went out.

  Faint bangs signaled the closing of decompression doors in thinned atmosphere. A dim glow from the emergency lights brought back some visibility as the Xajion tumbled like a can kicked by a giant. Kinjie clung to his saddle with all six feet, cursing himself for a fool.

  The humans had obviously cut his shift-ring during its passage along the ship. Thus, they’d cut his ship in half. The question was, how much was left in his half? He looked about in the dim glow noting with grim satisfaction that that damned diplomat Quell had been flung into a bulkhead and lay motionless. At least Kinjie wouldn’t have to listen to that blithering idiot saying “I told you so,” during his darkest hour.

  BRIDGE—HUMANIFORM CRUISER EXCELTOR—COMETARY EARTH ORBIT

  0938 EST

  “Captain! Part of the krane carrier is still in its original orbit. Spinning badly! We must have cut their shift-ring mid-transit!”

  “Sir,” Azimus called, “our observation ports on the other side of P3 picked up an incoming flash, presumably the jumped fragment.”

  “All hands…” Leis said, “OK crew, we’ve hurt that carrier. Don’t know how badly. Good work, but there’s bound to be support ships incoming. Look sharp! Stay passive. Don’t, I repeat, DON’T, let them get the drop on us like we got the drop on them.’”

  At the back of the bridge, the president and General Price blinked their eyes in the wake of the brilliant flash that had just lit so many of the holocubes in the bridge. “My God, Mallor, what’s happening out there?”

  The ensign blinked. “Well, I’m pretty sure we just cut the carrier’s shift-ring mid transit, sir.”

  “We heard that part! What’s it mean?”

  The ensign stared at them, seemingly at a loss to explain. A small voice began to whisper in the general’s and the president’s ears with a back-translation into Mallor’s ears. “This is the ship’s computer speaking in translator mode. ‘Shift-ring’ is a term I coined from two of your words to designate the ring shaped devices which we use to open wormholes from one position in the space-time continuum to another. The krane carrier had opened a wormhole and was passing a shift-ring over itself in order to jump to a new location when Exceltor successfully cut the ring and collapsed the wormhole. Collapsing a wormhole transects any objects within the shift-ring orifice and
thus should have cut the enemy ship into two pieces. The rear segment would be left in its original orbit while the front segment would be where it had arrived at the other end of the jump.”

  “Was that big flash an explosion from it being cut in half?”

  The ensign, having heard the computer’s translation message seemed at last to comprehend his audience’s lack of basis for understanding. The ensign said, “No sir. Opening a 10 meter wormhole to pass the carrier requires a huge amount of energy. About one per-cent of that power leaks away as light and other lower frequency radiation.” He looked away to one of the holotanks, “We estimate the flash at one megawatt, indicating an attempted jump of approximately one light second’s distance, perhaps to the other side of your world.”

  “Only ten meters in diameter? You told us the thing was 700 meters long!”

  “That’s correct. Energy requirements to open a wormhole vary as the square of the diameter of the hole. This makes it most efficient to build ships that are very long yet slender. Exceltor at 7.1 meters diameter, is barely wider than the 5.3 meter width of the bridge you see before you, but she’s nearly 200 meters long.”

  “Wait a minute. You said that one megawatt flash represented one percent waste? You’re claiming it took 100 megawatts of energy to jump to the other side of the planet?”

  “Correct. Actually that is an incredibly small amount of energy to move such a large mass such a distance at near instantaneous speed.” Even the translation managed to sound huffy. “Without Vinzearian physics it couldn’t be done.”

  “How did you cut the shift-ring?”

  “Captain Leis is brilliant! He had small weapon locating port-rings located on the surface of the krane carrier as soon as we found it. He had them set to automatically transfer in weapon-rings and destroy the shift-ring if the krane tried to move.”

  “Weapon locating port-rings?”

  The ensign said, “Port-rings are small versions of the shift-rings that can be held open for observation. We call rings that are used to attack the enemy weapon-rings.”

  At the front of the bridge, the captain wasn’t feeling brilliant, just incredibly lucky and still damned scared. He turned to Azimus. “Lieutenant, the locals aren’t lighting us up with their radar are they?”

  “No sir. With our shift-flash shielded by the moon I don’t think they know we’re here yet.”

  “OK team. Have we got sets of sensor-rings behind that moon and on the far side of P3 to pick up any incoming jumps?”

  “Yes sir.”

  BRIDGE—KRANE DESTROYER ZOADEN—MARS ORBIT

  1000 EST

  Captain Quinjot read with dismay the three messages from Commander Kinjie on Xajion. The first detailed the arrival of the humans into a moon eclipsed location and Kinjie’s intention to shift to the other side of P3 before he was detected. The second message was from a lieutenant in the rear half of Xajion—which had been left in its original location by the collapsed jump—who still had locator ports extant in Zoaden’s message bay. The sniveling spawn of a DNA oiton was pitifully begging for rescue. After some time for the front half of Xajion to extrude an antenna through a small port near Mars, a third terse message arrived from Xajion’s bridge. “Xajion destroyed. Captain Jenkoit on the Yaitan is now in temporary command of the task force. Destruction of human cruiser paramount. Detail one rescue port to locate the Xajion bow fragment which is now in low P3 orbit opposite moon, approximate location data to follow.”

  Quinjot’s cilia drooped and then commenced the jerky movements of a true fury. Jenkoit in command! Had Kinjie forgotten that Quinjot was senior? No! Kinjie had always favored that DNA based spawn of a suckerfish! Now he’d jumped Quinjot’s seniority to put Jenkoit in command. Hah, Quinjot thought, Jenkoit will fall on his face like any other officer who won his position through influence rather than ability.

  The angry buzzing of another red message light caught his attention. From Jenkoit of course. Quinjot was assigned to jump his ship Zoaden to a high P3 orbit. Of course! That placed him where the human ship was probably bound and might already be able to see. Jenkoit, like the coward he was, had placed Quinjot in the gravest danger. And, Jenkoit assigned Quinjot to locate the Xajion fragment and establish a rescue port which would pick up Kinjie. Of course, Jenkoit didn’t want Kinjie on his ship!

  Quinjot issued his own orders. First they would jump to as low a P3 orbit as could possibly be construed to follow the order to “jump to a high orbit.” Second he assigned Quac, a chronic bumbler, to locate the Xajion fragment. If anyone could screw it up it would be Quac. Further orders located observation ports to be set up behind the moon and on the opposite side of the planet.

  BRIDGE—KRANE DESTROYER YAITAN—VENUS ORBIT

  1000 EST

  Captain Jenkoit’s mind quivered over the implications. He was now the mission commander. There would be tremendous potential for promotion if he were able to defeat the enemy that had just successfully dispatched Kinjie. Especially when Jenkoit brought a system this rich into the krane fold. Unfortunately, knowing Captain Quinjot, that excretory orifice would be seizing every opportunity to stab Jenkoit in the back over this “out of rank” promotion. Jenkoit would have to manage Quinjot in such a manner that the other captain couldn’t hurt Jenkoit’s plan without directly disobeying commands.

  Quinjot had, no doubt, already located a jump into a lower orbit than Jenkoit had implied in his orders, but that was OK. Jenkoit also expected Quinjot to make an ineffective effort to establish a rescue port on the damaged carrier, Xajion. But, Jenkoit didn’t really want Commander Kinjie back on the scene either. For Jenkoit’s own destroyer Yaitan, he plotted a moon eclipsed transfer, but, not into an orbit. Instead Yaitan would come out on a “bounce” vector that launched it directly up from the surface of the moon at a velocity that would give him several hours before he had to jump again. The second jump would still be eclipsed; the only problem would be the fact that he must lose any located ports in four to five hours when the bounce came to an end.

  The two krane destroyers exchanged message capsules with best possible descriptions of their upcoming jumps in order to enable rapid communication-port linkup post jump and then they jumped almost simultaneously.

  BRIDGE—HUMANIFORM CRUISER EXCELTOR—COMETARY EARTH ORBIT

  1015 EST

  “Azimus, have you located the jumped fragment of the carrier yet?”

  “No sir. Our observation port was pretty far from the arrival site and I haven’t been able to massage a vector out of the record. I’m still driving some ports around trying to catch a visual, but I’m up to a pretty big search pattern by now.”

  “Snellen. What about the local message traffic? Did the locals on the planet pick up this jump too?”

  “No sir. But you wouldn’t expect the ordinary news services to be aware of a one megawatt jump-flash on the day side of a planet and governmental communications are hard to tap into.”

  The president spoke up. “Captain Leis. We might be able to help if…”

  Azimus interrupted. “Captain! A 10 megawatt jump-flash, behind the planet! A 5 megawatt behind the moon. Probably destroyers incoming from somewhere else in the system. The 10 megawatt might be a cruiser depending on distance.”

  “You going to be able to pick them up?”

  “Working on it sir.”

  “Captain Leis.” The president spoke again. “Would it help if we tried to light them up with radar again?”

  “It could if you can point your radar in the right direction. Snellen. Establish the president a comm link.”

  “No Captain, I must go back myself. In the first place, they’d better not take orders from me while I’m in your power. In the second, it’s my job to be back there in the White House!”

  “You’re correct sir. Snellen, you and Gunny arrange a transfer back to the White House for the president and his assistant, then set up a comm link.”

  “Mr. President, I should stay here as liaison.” The gener
al leaned in close to his president. “Sir, if I’m under duress I’ll stutter when I contact you.” The minuscule “microphone port” that the computer was maintaining by the general’s head picked up the whisper, but the word “stutter” was outside its current English vocabulary.

  GUNNERY ROOM—HUMANIFORM CRUISER EXCELTOR—COMETARY EARTH ORBIT

  1020 EST

  Nedcam looked up from his perusal of the investigation team’s antics in the White House. Lt. Snellen had come in to say that she had the president in the transfer chamber and was decompressing it at the maximum safe rate to avoid the bends. She said, “Locate a suitable shift location for back-transfer of the president.”

  From the transfer room where he was looking at a mirrored image of Nedcam’s screen showing the situation room, the president asked “Why not right into the middle of the room there?”

  “Well sir, the shift-flash can be painful, if not damaging, to the eyes,” Nedcam said. “When we were picking you up we had to wait quite a while for everyone to look away at one of your computer screens. We can have a safe transfer pretty much whenever we want if we just swing over into the hallway.”

  Rayland stopped cracking his jaw to ask, “Why aren’t they noticing the light from the wormhole’ we’re looking through?”

  “Sir, this wormhole is only one millimeter in diameter. Light emission varies by the square of the size and linearly with the distance of a wormhole. With this tiny wormhole, where we’re only squaring one millimeter and bridging less than a light second’s distance, it’s emitting less than a hundredth of a watt—essentially unnoticeable.”

  When the decompression algorithm thought it was nearly safe, Lt. Snellen asked the president to stand on a pedestal in the center of a one meter ring and reminded him to keep his hands away from the metal rails the ring rode on. “Pull yourself in, open your mouth wide and close your eyes sir, you don’t want the ring to touch you on its way up.” No sooner than he had his hands all the way down at his sides there was a flash of light sensed right through his eyelids and gravity suddenly went up while air pressure dropped a little more. Because the pressure differential hadn’t completely equalized, air whooshed out of his open mouth and his ears began to hurt again.