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  “For once I’m glad people don’t play by the rules,” said Mog. “Send a message to their captains. Order them to offload anybody they don’t need to the other transports and to take up defensive positions. They’ll be helping us today.”

  “Right,” said Nali. “I also had an idea about those bulk transports. They don’t have any guns, so it should be safe for the smaller unshielded ships to fly in close to their hulls. The transports can extend their shields around everybody.”

  Mog tipped an ear at her. “And keep the little guys alive a bit longer. Good. Pass that along too.”

  The transpod doors opened and Kremp strode onto the bridge. His gray fur was matted and his uniform torn at the shoulder. “Commander, we’re done with the power cabling. I energized one of the guns and took a few readings at the coils. They’re incredible! To think, the engineers on this rock had developed these little gems, yet we’ve never seen them in the fleet.”

  “Naval Research has lots of projects that were deemed too expensive for peace time,” said Mog. “This war came on too fast. But the point is we have the weapons now. Let’s hope it’s not too late.”

  “They’ll work, sir,” said Kremp. “I’ve been going over the design with the physicists who created the projectors. It’s cutting edge particle manipulation. I’ve been saying all along that annular beam compression combined with the right capacitors would triple the charge intensity and maintain power flow. Well, now we’ve got them and we might finally have something that’ll scare the Ta’Krell.”

  “Here’s to that,” said Nali. “Too bad we don’t have the time to put a dozen of them on every ship, station, and sensor probe. Then we might actually have a chance.”

  “When can we test them?” said Mog.

  “Soon,” said Kremp. “Hopefully in a few more hours. We still aren’t done reinforcing the hull.”

  “Alright,” grumbled Mog. He had hoped they could run a test this minute. Blowing up asteroids was always good fun. “Let me know as soon as they are operational.”

  “Yes sir,” said Kremp. He shuffled excitedly from one foot to the other. “Also sir, the report on the guns isn’t the only reason why I came up here. I’ve got something else to show you.”

  Mog raised an ear.

  “I’ve had the computer working on it all night, and the results just came in. The ships coming at us are not big cruisers. They’re much smaller. I think we can win this fight.”

  Mog studied his engineer’s face. There was no mistaking the boyish enthusiasm, despite the fact that Kremp was older than the rest of them by nearly fifty years. Like Nali and Ryal, Kremp had been with Mog on the Narma Kull from the beginning, and Mog had never known the engineer to joke about something like this. He did however have the annoying habit of withholding information until the last minute.

  “Well, go on then,” said Mog with a slight growl.

  “See, I’ve had the computer working on a little program of mine since last night,” said Kremp. “According to the calculations, there are actually twenty ships coming at us.”

  “Twenty?” Mog gaped at the engineer. How could Kremp think this was good news? “I thought there were only three ships.”

  Kremp plowed on oblivious to Mog’s bared fangs. “Yes, well, there are actually twenty, flying in three separate hyperspace layers in a tight formation. They’re a recon fleet. Little guys, Mog. Except for one of them, the ships don’t have enough mass to be much larger than frigates. I don’t know what they’re planning, but if they attack us directly we’d be pretty evenly matched in terms of gross tonnage.”

  “I thought they were scrambling our sensors,” said Mog.

  “That’s true, but I think I got around that.” Kremp sat down at one of the science stations at the port side of the bridge. Mog rose and joined him.

  “I found this program a few years ago. It filters out hyperspace distortion around spatial anomalies, so that you can scan them better. This is what the early explorers used when they first mapped Sledgim’s solar system. Yesterday, I realized that hyperspace distortions do the same thing to our sensors arrays as the Ta’Krell’s jamming technology seems to do. They don’t usually use jammers, but we got a taste of it early in the war during the battle of Rotan IV, when they got the drop on us.”

  “I remember that,” said Mog. “We thought Screll refugee transports were coming towards us, fleeing their boarder war with the Talurians. But the vessel’s signatures had been altered. They were Ta’Krell.”

  “Yes yes,” said Kremp. “I’ve been looking at those records, and I realized the similarities in how our sensor beamforming is thrown off. It’s hyperspace distortion.”

  “So you’re saying that the Ta’Krell’s jammers work by distorting emissions in hyperspace?” said Mog.

  “Haven’t I been saying that? It only works for ships in hyperspace, not normal space. The Ta’Krell are jamming our sensors by phasing their emissions through a moving hyperspace reference frame that exists parallel to the one they are traveling in. They’ve probably got some sort of tiny probe ship just ahead of each of their three groups, generating the distortion. I just needed to compensate our sensor timing signals and phase-correct for that extra reference frame during post-processing. The code tweaks were easy. The math was a bit tedious, but I had help from the computer, and from a bottle of Albersen’s. That draught always helps one smooth over the rough edges.”

  “Of course,” said Mog.

  “Anyway,” said Kremp. “Watch this.”

  An image of the solar system popped up on the screen. There was a cluster of three fuzzy blobs at the outermost edge.

  “This is our current sensor data,” said Kremp, pointing at the screen. “Now, watch as I change the beamforming.”

  He keyed in a few obscure commands, and the fuzzy blobs began to resolve into more definite shapes. Soon, there were nineteen small blips and one larger one, grouped in three distinct clusters.

  “Twenty ships,” said Mog. “But perhaps only one with enough shield capacity to withstand a blast from our new guns.”

  “Exactly,” said Kremp. “We’ve never been able to overload the shields on one of their big cruisers, but we have burned through the shields of their smaller craft. With the new guns from NR…”

  Mog clapped the engineer on the back. “If this is right, then they can’t crush us like they did at Mauria. What do you suppose they’re doing?”

  “I’m not done yet,” said Kremp. He made a few more adjustments to the program. A moment later, a collection of dashed lines sprang out from the blips on the screen. “These lines represent the course each ship is taking. They’re breaking formation.”

  “And making a new one,” said Mog. He tapped the screen, the threads of an updated defense coming together in his mind. “It’s a sphere. They’re surrounding the system.”

  “They’re trying to trap us here,” said Ja’Tar. “We have to leave now!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Meela. “They’d never be able to keep us here with only twenty ships. We could slip through their perimeter.”

  “I agree,” said Nali. “They’re going to close in and attack from all sides. It’ll be rough, but we can take them. We fight!”

  “That doesn’t fit,” said Mog. “Don’t you see? In every fight so far, the Ta’Krell have held the advantage. It’s how they do things. If they were planning a direct assault with only twenty ships, they’d be converging into a tighter formation, not diverging. No, they’re up to something. But what? Trying to bottle us up with only twenty ships is more likely to fail than a direct assault. It’s like trying to capture baitfish with a whaling net. The holes are too big.”

  “So, what are they doing?” said Ja’tar.

  “I don’t know,” said Mog. “They aren’t stupid. They must have something we don’t know about. Still, against twenty small craft we may be able to save everyone if we hurry. Get me Ruba on the com.”

  It took ten minutes for Ja’tar to e
stablish the connection. When the king’s face appeared, he seemed older than ever. He was in his private quarters, and the dim lighting suggested he had been sleeping.

  “What is it, Commander?” said the king.

  “We have news about those three ships approaching the system.”

  “News? How do you have news?”

  “My engineer filtered out the noise. No time to explain more. They’ve got nineteen small craft and one large one, in three groups. They’re going to surround us. Look, we’ll send our processed data.”

  He pointed at Kremp, who ran up to the second level to help Ja’tar. Ruba looked down at his display, which cast a yellow glow over his face. When he looked back up, his gaze might as well have skewered Mog to the aft bulkhead.

  “How is this better?” said the king. “They have more ships.”

  “More smaller ships,” said Mog. “Probably not powerful enough to withstand a direct blast from the Narma Kull. We can take them out one by one. We’ll gang up on the big one and take it down together.”

  Ruba looked up from his display and studied Mog’s face. His expression softened. “You believe your engineer implicitly.”

  Mog realized it was not a question.

  “If your analysis is correct, then we might have a chance against them. This does not fit the Ta’Krell’s methods. Mog, this is an advance patrol. They’ll have reinforcements on the way.”

  “That makes sense,” said Mog. “We need to send our civilians out before those reinforcements arrive. It will also make the Ta’Krell more confident if they see us running. We can loop our military escort back around and blast a hole in their ranks. On the initial departure, we’ll hide our escort ships in the shadow of the bulk transports, so that the approaching Ta’Krell don’t even know we’ve got a second fleet until it’s too late. We can break off and hide in the asteroid belt. Then, when the time is right, we spring the trap.”

  “I see you’ve thought about this for quite some time,” said Ruba. “You will lead the assault force to the edge of the system as planned. The rest of the warships will set up a defensive perimeter around Mauria Prime.”

  The transpod doors swooshed open and Ryal stepped onto the bridge. He was covered in grime and he looked like he hadn’t slept. “We’ve got those fancy PPC orbital defense guns tied into the fire control system,” he said. “But it’s a bit of a hack job. Oh, Kremp, there you are. Did you already tell him about the guns?” He paused when he saw the king on the viewscreen, and offered a quick bow. “Ah, hello Your Majesty. What did I miss?”

  “Oh, nothing important,” said the king. “Only that you’re getting your wish. Yes Subcommander, the Narma Kull will have her revenge.”

  Chapter 17

  They left the arrival platform and merged into the sea of people. The concourse resounded with hundreds of voices, mixed together with overlapping advertisements and the distant roar of engines. A little kid was screaming his head off, begging his mother to let him download some new game. Robotic vendors hawked cheap bioware to unsuspecting tourists, air transports whooshed by overhead, and luggage moved this way and that, sometimes trailing at the heels of their owners but more often following pre-programmed routes towards the terminal buildings.

  “It’s always a mad house,” said Morgan, as he dodged a particularly aggressive carry-on bag. He stumbled over a homeless man who was sitting down next to one of the arrival platforms. The man’s back was propped up against the base of the platform. ‘Anything Helps’ was scrawled across his cardboard sign.

  “Sorry,” said Morgan.

  The man didn’t seem to notice. He stared vacantly off and scratched at something behind his ear. It was a loaded data port. Lights flashed as the sim card fed stimulant data into his brain. Probably some dirty fantasy, thought Morgan. Still, who was he to say how the guy should spend his money? Morgan pulled out his phone and transferred twenty credits to the man’s data port.

  “Ah, thanks,” said the man, opening his eyes and seeing Morgan for the first time. “God bless.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Morgan.

  “Come on,” said Liz, pointing at the shuttle port at the other end of the complex. It was a separate construct from the airport terminals, with an attached shuttle launch pad on the far side. “We need to go there.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they stepped onto the enormous escalator that ran the pedestrian traffic up from the outside concourse to the shuttle port.

  “Look,” said Liz, pointing up at one of the two square landing pads above them. “One’s taking off.” The shuttle was rising into the sky on repulsors. When it was about twenty feet up, the turbines spooled up and it began its diagonal ascent. “So it’ll fly like an airplane until it gets towards the upper atmosphere, and then use a rocket to get the rest of the way up?”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “Haven’t you ridden one before?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been to space before.”

  She must be joking. Morgan had been seven years old when he had first seen Earth from orbit. “So that’s why you’re so excited,” he said.

  She grinned.

  The escalator passed through the arch leading inside the shuttle port and dumped them out in a wide lobby. They followed the crowd towards the ticket counter. Morgan walked up to a vacant station and scanned the space show tickets through the computer terminal, which hummed for a minute before uploading two boarding passes to his phone.

  “Enjoy your trip to Starlight Station,” it said. “Gate one is boarding now, so you should hurry.”

  “Thanks,” said Morgan.

  “Can I get my pass?” said Liz.

  “Sure,” said Morgan. He handed her his phone, which she studied for a moment. “Just press the transfer button on the side,” he said. “It should recognize your NFC.”

  “I know how it works,” she said. “I’ve used one before.” She pressed the button and held the phone against her left palm. Morgan’s phone beeped, indicating the data transfer was complete. Tiny lights coursed across Liz’s eyes, then winked out.

  She handed Morgan back his phone. “Got a ticket to the moon,” she said. “Be rising high above the earth so soon, and the tears I cry might turn to rain that gently falls upon your window, but you’ll never know.”

  “What was that?” said Morgan.

  “Just an old song.” She sniffed. “I always wanted to go to space, but my mom never took me with her on her trips. Her work wouldn’t pay for it, and my dad thought it was a waste of money.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Morgan. He hesitated. Should I ask her about her mom? He decided to risk it. “Does your mom go up a lot?”

  She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  A shadow seemed to fall across her face, and she looked away. “Come on, we need to get going or we’ll miss this one, and it’s a four hour wait until the next shuttle.”

  Morgan didn’t press the topic. As they hurried to the gate, he scrolled through the boarding pass data. It indicated a fulfilled cost of three-thousand Commonwealth credits. He whistled. This sure isn’t cheap. Of course the ISF probably didn’t pay face value, but still…

  The security barrier was the usual hassle, but they made it past the scanners and the faceless droid guards without incident. When they reached the gate, boarding was nearly complete. Morgan scanned his phone, and Liz pressed her palm against the boarding scanner.

  When they stepped up from the umbilical tunnel to the shuttle’s airlock, they found the ship almost full. The shuttle had about two hundred seats organized in six columns, three on each side with a center aisle between. Their seats were next to each other, about halfway back on the port side.

  “Excuse us,” said Liz, to the large red-haired man sitting in the aisle seat.

  “Of course,” said the man. He struggled to his feet and squeezed out so they could sit down. Morgan offered Liz the window seat. He sat down in the middle after stowing his backpack in t
he overhead. The businessman straightened his suit and sat down next to them.

  “There’s a lot of airplanes down there,” said Liz, looking out the window. The shuttle’s elevated launch pad offered a good view of the adjacent airport. “I’ve flown from here a couple times, but never saw how many planes there are.”

  “Yeah, it’s a busy hub,” said Morgan.

  Liz turned from the window and started saying something, but froze. Morgan followed her gaze. A guy with greasy black hair was strolling down the aisle, wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” whispered Liz. “Not again. He is following me!”

  “He’s seen us,” said Morgan out of the corner of his mouth.

  Two seconds later, Victor was leaning against the side of the aisle seat, oblivious to the businessman’s obvious annoyance.

  “What’s up,” he said. “You kids on a date or something?”

  Liz laughed. “Why would that matter to you?”

  Victor mumbled something that Morgan didn’t catch and seemed to lose some of his swagger. He cleared his throat. “Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Oh?” said Liz. “Then maybe you’d consider telling my insurance company that the whole thing was—”

  Victor held up his mechanical hand. “Not just about the crash, but about all of it, before. You’re right, it was all my fault. I just wanted you to know.”

  Morgan looked from Liz to Victor and back to Liz. What the heck is he going on about?

  Liz’s mouth was hanging open. When she finally spoke, her voice was shaking. “You came all the way here just to tell me that?”

  Victor shook his head. “I’m checking out the space show. I honestly didn’t know Captain Batson was handing out this many tickets.” He glared at Morgan. “I thought the ISF wanted skilled pilots.”

  “Stuff it,” said Morgan