Logan Ryvenbark's Saga Box Set

Table of contents-11

Those are unforgettable words in lifeand in the military. ‘If all goes well…’ You plan your best andthen hope for the best.

Belen had sent me the information aboutthe three planets in the Terlor system. I transferred them to thebigscreen. You can learn about your opponent by knowing what type ofweapons he uses. It reveals what you’re up against.

Usually that’s true. But when Isurveyed the surface of one of the planets, I wasn’t sure what thedevastation revealed — if anything. The cities had not been bombed.All the buildings stood erect. Smaller towns showed no physicaldestruction. But there was no movement on the surface of theplanet.The aliens must have used some type of chemical or biologicalweapon.It killed sentient beings on contact, but didn’t alter physicalstructures. But it must have been another weapon that dried up theatmosphere.

I frowned. Why not just use one or theother? If aliens disintegrate the atmosphere of a planet,everythingon the surface and even below the surface dies. You don’t have touse a biological weapon. Double-kill. They possibly fired bothweapons at the same time thinking one might not work. But bothworkedremarkably well.

A friend of mine, Major Walt Stetson,saw combat on a small, out-of-the-way planet a couple of years ago.Iforgot the name of it. But during a fierce battle, one of hisvolleyshit an innocent. A woman who, sadly, was in the wrong place at thewrong time. In war innocent people die, but Walt agonized aboutthat.He still remembers it. Not that he has to. Our memory drugs couldwipe it from his brain. But he has refused to use them. It’s areminder of the price of war.

One soul. One among the countlessbillions of sentient beings. How could a single individual be soimportant among the countless masses?

Yet she was. Each individual life isimportant. That’s one of our core beliefs.

But whoever or whatever was hiddeninside the sphere, didn’t mind killing billions.

I sipped my drink. If my friend,professor Clu Ryker was here, we would have a discussion on thatsubject. Clu has an IQ just above 200. He’s always a fascinatingconversationalist, especially in anthropological and philosophicalmatters. But this was no time for philosophical musings.

The second planet looked like about thesame as the first. No life. Nothing moved. Not even bugs. Justemptiness and hollowness. No devastation wrought by bombs or otherexplosions. No large craters. No holes where a city should be. Juststillness. The stillness of a graveyard. How do you fight somethinglike that?

With everything you’ve got. And more.

I flicked the screen back on thesphere. It had turned three planets in mass cemeteries, but it keptcoming this way. Which told me it didn’t have to return home toreload. It had weapons galore. Which meant the Federation or,rather,Ryvenbark’s Raiders had to keep it from coming near to a fourthplanet.

But there was no reason for the sphereto attack the three planets. Such viciousness is often puzzling tohumans, but shouldn’t be.

There was no particular reason forGenghis Khan to travel west to conquer the rest of Asia and Europe,but he did. The Soviet Union was a huge nation, the largest in theworld. It didn’t need the very small nations of Estonia, Latvia andLithuania, but Stalin invaded and crushed them anyway. Thendeportedhalf of the population. Stalin and Mao killed tens of millions.Withthose two and others like them in our past, humans shouldn’t besurprised at the viciousness of other races.

When you’re fighting a war, thereason why the other guy started it is irrelevant. You can ask himthat when he sues for peace.

There was one plus of having two shipsflying, running interference for the sphere. It might be anindication that the sphere couldn’t perform aerial warfare. The twosilver ships could indicate a weakness in space combat, which isentirely different from simply spraying toxins on a planet.Somethingto consider.

But did it need protection in space? IfFederation scientists were correct, the outer rim was impenetrable.Our bombs, lasers, etc. were harmless against it.

And we didn’t have an antimatterweapon. That might take care of the sphere. Were the two silverdefenders sent just in case…?

They would have to be destroyed first.

Then Raiders would take on the sphere.

Chapter 4

Tekmann’s deep baritone voice came onthe line. Cajun and I have passable singing voices, but when Tekbelts out a song, it’s mesmerizing. Singing, though, is only hishobby, even if he probably could have made a living at it. But hisexpertise is weapons.

“Tek, I assume you have looked at thesphere.”

“Yes. An amazing structure. Neverseen anything like it before.”

“Let’s hope we don’t see anythinglike it again. Any idea of how to stop it?”

“I hate to tell you this, sir, but asof now I have no idea at all.” The baritone voice sounded evenlower than usual.

“Shucks, I was hoping you’d give meat least three options.”

“You can’t make an informeddecision about an enemy unless you have some information. None ofourscanners have given us any facts about this thing, major. When wefirst became aware of it, we thought it was a big rock in space.Right now all we know is it’s still a big rock in space. We can’tpenetrate inside. For that matter, we don’t even know the substanceit’s made of. A nice, polished rock.”

My voice had a note of exasperation.“Tek, if it’s just a rock, how could it have caused the death ofthree planets and annihilated the civilizations who lived onthem?”

“Don’t know. I assume it hasweapons, but we don’t know how it uses them. There’s no opening,no place to fire. There is no opening or port on the outer surfacethat might be used to launch an attack. It might be able to open aportal to fire but, if so, we don’t know where that portalis.”

“Federation scientists are guessingit’s hollow.”

“Maybe, but there still could befifty miles of crust to get through.”

“Tek, if I sent an equator bomb atit, is there any way of predicting what the damage mightbe?”

“No, but I think there’s a verygood chance it would flow right through the bomb and keep on itswaywithout missing a beat. As I said, never seen anything likeit.”

“How about a desert bomb? Drop in ona planet and mountains are leveled. So is everything else over twoinches high.”

“Depends how heavy and how thick theouter core is. Doubtful it would work. Without getting overlytechnical, a desert bomb doesn’t really make a planet go poof. Notat first. Huge explosion that's for sure, but that begins a chainreaction and the chain reaction — although it only takes minutes —must be engaged to get the end result. The chain reaction keepsgetting larger and larger. But there’s nothing on the sphere tochain react with. So I don’t think a desert bomb would work on thesphere. And that’s the most powerful weapon we have in ourarsenal,” Tek said.

“You’re a fountain of good news,”I said.

“I’ll keep working on it.”

“Good. I need a lot of scientistsworking on this problem.”

I refilled my drink and kept glancingat the sphere. Maybe the Federation scientists were right in thatwe’d have to get inside to destroy it. Which left open thequestion: how do we get inside?

When the knock on the door came, Iyelled ‘come in’. When the door opened, the six-seven JericoHaldran came in. He had grown a goatee since the last time I hadseenhim. The black-and-gray beard looked good on him. He smiled as hemade a smart salute.

“Major Ryvenbark, it’s been a longtime.”

“So it has, Jerry. How are you?”

I shook his hand.

“Doing well. But haven’t had muchexcitement for a while. So when the call came through, I thoughtI’dsign up. You have a mystery to be solved, and I like solvingmysteries.

“I’m glad you do. Sit down, Jerry.Did the Federation tell you what we’re facing?”

Jerico is skilled in any number ofweapons, including old-fashioned knives and garrotes — although hehas sadly noted that soldiers rarely get to garrote anyone in ahigh-tech war. He’s somewhat disappointed about that. But he alsois a brilliant space engineer.

“Yes, told me about the sphere andabout the three dead planets.” He smiled. “They always give youthe toughest jobs, Logan.”

“But this time they promised abonus,” I answered, smirking.

He laughed and looked up at the screen,which still was focused on the sphere. “I do understand theirconcern. They’re fighting the Creagers on one side of the galaxyand have this thing crawling up the other side. It’s not a positionthey like to be in.”

“Did they brief you on everything?”

“Yes, with all the information theyhad, but they have almost nothing.”

“True. And that’s what bothers me.Any preliminary thoughts on the sphere?”

“No. The thing came out of nowhere.We’re scrambling to find out any details, but as of yet it’syielded no information. We’re going in blind, major,” hesaid.

“Like Lee at Gettysburg, and that’snot a good feeling.”

“Yes, but Lee was blind at Gettysburgbecause Gen. Stuart made one of his very few mistakes during thewar.None of our people have made mistakes. They just can’t findanything.”

“Let me ask you something. Oh, wouldyou like a drink?”

“Have any whiskey?”

“I do.”

I walked over to the bar, dropped twoice cubes in a glass and poured in the whiskey. I mixed a secondglass for me, then handed the first glass to Jerry.

“There’s one thing that puzzles me.Well, there are actually many things that puzzle me about thissphere. One problem is it suddenly popped up, and destroyed threeplanets before we knew what hit them. But now it’s traveling slow,not even close to light speed. At the rate it’s going it will takeyears for it to reach the next solar system. If it wants to kill somuch why not hurry up? If there’s an intelligence behind it, theslow speed makes no sense tactically. When it wiped out the threeplanets it had the element of surprise. The planets also had nodefenses. But moving so slowly it lost the advantage of surprise.Ifit could move faster, say at light speed or warp speed, it couldhaveattacked other planets before the Federation became aware of it.Nowwe’re mobilizing our defenses.”

“Or mobilizing Ryvenbark’sRaiders,” Haldran said.

“Yes. The creators of this object arehighly intelligent. Why would they make a mistake likethat?”

Haldran sipped his drink. “A goodquestion. That thought had crossed my mind too. It’s a possibilitythat it can’t go any faster.”

“If that’s true, it would bedifficult for the sphere to sneak up on us.”

“Yes, but if there’s nothing wehave that can destroy it, it doesn’t have to sneak up on us. It’sflying death, so all we can do is wait for it, or see if we canfleeto a planet out of its way. From the little we can tell, it mayhavebeen flowing in space for hundreds, or hundreds of thousands ofyears. As space objects go, the sphere is small, too small for ourscanners looking into large areas of space. Or if we did spot it,itwould be mistaken for space debris. If it’s been floating forhundreds of thousands of years, it has hundreds of thousands ofmoreyears to go. It’s in no hurry for the next solar system to showup.”

“But if that’s true, it could havebeen roaming not for thousands of years but hundreds of millions ofyears. At that speed how long would it take to cross galaxies? Andwhy would any aliens point it toward us hundreds of millions ofyearsago?”

“Can’t answer that questioneither.” He shrugged. “Maybe millions of years ago theinhabitants of another galaxy determined this galaxy was a primespotfor life, and the aliens did not like crowds. They wanted theuniverse all to themselves.”

“I don’t like crowds either, butpeople in another galaxy are not going to bother me much,” Isaid.

“But the why is not our primaryconcern. We can worry about that later. Right now our number onepriority is destroying it.”

I jumped up and grabbed my gun when thedoor almost flew off its hinges and banged on the wall.

“You still have great instincts,Logan. Congratulations.”

I sighed with relief and holstered thegun.

“Kayli. I almost killed you.” Iturned to Haldran. “Do you know Dr. Kayli Neugen? She’s a ladywho knows how to make an entrance.”

“Yes, she does. We’re oldacquaintances.”

The Cajun Asian walked over and kissedHaldran on the creek. Then laughed and kissed me.

“Well, looks like I’ll be workingagain with two of my favorite guys,” she said. “What’s thestatus of the mission?”

“Same as it was. Nothing haschanged,” I said.

She looked up at the screen. “Sothat’s our mysterious object, is it? Doesn’t look like all thatmuch.”

“Sometimes looks can be deceiving.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Iwonder who brought it here.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Beg yourpardon?”

“The thing is slow. So I’mwondering who brought it here. It couldn’t have wandered from anearby galaxy. The distance is too much of a factor. Naturalquestion: who taxied it to our piece of real estate?”

I looked at Haldran. “It wasn’t anatural question for us. We thought it simply took a long, longtimeto get here. Looks like the thing could last forever just floatinginspace. Well, actually I thought that. Think Jerry wasnon-committal.”

“If that’s what happened, where arethe navigational controls? Taking a trip that will take millions ofyears in a big universe… It’s very easy to get lost. One slighterror and you are hundreds of millions of light years away fromyourtarget. Not an effective way to wage war.”

“So a thousand-mile long spaceshiptraveled near the outskirts of the galaxy, emptied its cargo and…went back home?”

Cajun nodded. “Possibly. Here’s atheory. There is a civilization in the next galaxy, a civilizationthat is composed of not-very-nice people. They are not like thefolksin… say Tennessee in 1900. You know, going to church on Sunday,walking the park, going to ice cream socials. Let’s assume theirnot-so-nice counterparts in the galaxy beyond us have thetechnologyto peek into the next galaxy down the street. We actually have thattechnology, but just haven’t bothered yet. Warp-speed probes. Butthey went exploring and discovered the next block over teems withlife. But instead of being delighted, they are upset, murderouslyso.So they build a killing machine. But the problem is the darn thingcan’t do warp speed; can’t even do light speed. It’sdestructive, but it’s slow, much too slow to be of any use to them.But they have other talents besides creating death machines. Theycanbuild really, really big ships. A ship that could transport theirdeath machine. So they do and they bring it over here and let itgo.They have unleashed a weapon that they believe can’t be stopped, sothey just sit back and wait for the destruction. We have ships thatbig, just in case.”