Chapter Nine: Game of Tag
The computer buzzed a warning, ten minutes until the ship reverted into normal space. Jim glanced over at his Senarian ally. She was tall, even for her race, about 9’5”, and her massive proportions took-up most of the cockpit of the spaceboat that had been their home for almost a week. She was very beautiful, Jim thought. Still, she wasn’t attractive to him in the sense of an actual relationship. Jim preferred humans.
But she made for a good conversation, anyway.
“Well. We’re almost there.” Najenkur said. “I have never been to Haven. What should I know beforehand.”
Jim thought for a moment and said, “If all goes well, then we shouldn’t even need to land. And that is a good thing. Haven is the last planet in the galaxy any law enforcer wants to be. All we need to worry about is finding Tulva and sending his cult into the black hole which they belong.” Jim saw the Senarian’s face contort into disgust and then she looked at him sympathetically, worried, it seemed.
The five-minute warning buzzed.
“Why do you hate Tulva so much, Lt. Raynor?” She asked with obvious concern, as if she didn’t even realize she was being intrusive.
“I hate all cults.” Jim snapped at her.
“It is something more than that,” she responded. “You hate cults for a reason. I feel your hate. It is personal.”
Jim sighed. He couldn’t hide anything from her. At length, he said, “My brother, Trav. He… was in the Imperial Guard. About twelve years ago, there was an uprising of Vorth Monks. They had some new leader or something supposedly chosen by the grass spirits to lead the Vorth on galactic conquest. Somehow, they got their hands on a prototype nanobot machine that used neural-interfacing microids to control peoples’ minds. The leader—I think they called him Vox-Tue—could control remotely anyone who he infected with the nanobots..
“He started sending out his followers, and infected a huge portion of Kantapolis from Knox to Dandridge. My brother was saving lives, I know. His body was found next to the machine that built the nanobots, and Vox-Tue was dead as well, lying on top of my brother’s body. I don’ know what happened, but I know my brother saved the city. But he didn’t have to die! It wasn’t right! No one should ever be murdered in the name of God—let alone a false one…”
Jim’s normally unshakable voice and demeanor now began to break.
“Jim…” was all that Naj could say before the proximity alarm blared one last time.
They had arrived at Haven.
The red sky of subspace pealed away and revealed the largest planet that Najenkur had ever scene. It was twice the size of the Terran ancestral homeworld of Earth, but much less dense, meaning essentially the same gravity. Most of the planet was covered in the crime-infested metropolis called Apex city, and Haven was largely synonymous with the galaxy’s chief criminal element, the Yee family.
So, in a way, it was fitting that Tulva had finally been tracked to this abominable world. The space around the planet was filled with traffic, going and coming, legitimate and illicit. The homing signal was coming from the far side of the planet, so Naj engaged the deflector shields and set a course for a distant orbit around the planet, where space-traffic controllers would largely ignore her. It was nearly an hour before Tulva’s ship was spotted. Or more accurately, Tulva’s ships.
The instruments indicated at least thirty different vessels, all in a teardrop formation with the ship tagged as Tulva’s in the center. Naj adjusted their course to prevent them from flying into the middle of the flotilla.
“Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming,” said Jim, Appearantly dumbfounded.
“If there are so many ships with him,” Naj thought out loud, “then why have they not detected the homing signal yet? Unless they plan to trap us.”
“No!” Jim quickly asserted. “The signal is encrypted and piggy-backed onto their long-range transponder. Even if the signal is detected, it is only perceived as transponder static unless you have the decryption installed in your scanner.”
“Which,” Najenkur realized out loud, “is why we’ve had to rely on your little handheld device—that I could crush between two fingers, I might add—to get us this far.” Naj inhaled slowly, belying the fact she was at a loss for what to do. “Well. What now? This old boat certainly can’t fight thirty to one.”
Jim was silent for a long moment, and then said, “I think I know what to do.” He reached for his handheld tracking device, and began pushing in a complex sequence of buttons. “I can activate the failsafe. If I do this right, I can make the tracking signal a priority one “ARREST ME” signal.”
Jim’s adjustments seemed to be working, too, because just as he finished, the ships began to scatter. “That got their attention,” intoned Najenkur. A ship, the size of Tulva’s but emitting no tracking signal, detached from a much larger ship, perhaps a command ship, headed for the planet. It hadn’t made 10 kilozivits when the nearest Haven defense vessels unceremoniously fired upon it, blasting it into scrap metal, but she could clearly feel that Tulva wasn’t on it
In all the confusion, telling one ship from another would be difficult. Frantic energy patterns made tracking drive-emissions impossible, so visual scanning was the only option. Najenkur steadied her boat.
“There!” Jim shouted, pointing his finger at a smaller gunship, quickly darting in a direction that none of the other ships were. “My instincts tell me that is him. Just bringing it about to get a clear view of the dispersing fleet. Naj saw the ship with Tulva’s tracking beacon on it disappear into hyperspace call it an educated guess, Naj, but I suggest you start moving.”
Najenkur reached out with her psionic sense, probing the minds. And sure enough, Tulva was on the darting ship, plain as the stars. “Good call,” she said. Naj brought the sublight drives to full, squeezing every last kir of power from the aging engines. Only one larger ship had had joined Tulva’s, and they were almost clear of the mass of the planet, and ready to jump out of the system.
Naj brought her ship in directly behind Tulva’s, trying not to draw attention. “Get his vector as soon as he jumps,” she ordered Jim. And just as she said it, the warp drives flared up on Tulva’s frigate and he was gone.
“He is heading towards Lota.” Jim said incredulously.
“Lota?” Najenkur echoed? “What is Lota?”
Jim read-off the readouts, though Naj could tell he had prior knowledge of the world, “Lota is a Nodian border world. I hear the Dominion uses it for testing their top-secret technology. There have been some crazy stories about ships that can jump across the galaxy in ten minutes, giant tanks that can single-handedly level cities. It’s crazy stuff, but it has never been disproved.”
“So why would Tulva be jumping into Dominion space, unless that is where this weapon of his is?”
“We will just have to find out,” responded a baffled Lt. Raynor, as the starfield fell away into a blinding blue storm.
On the bridge of Tulva’s flagship Sullen Retribution, confusion reigned. The shouting continued to increase until Tulva raised his hand and issued some psionic serenity to his distraught disciples. “Will someone calmly explain to me what has gone wrong? Anyone?”
A young Smuell bridge-officer stood up and addressed Jirinau directly. “Sir, I’m not certain why, but before we jumped, the ship started emitting Ythan-beta-97, a signal designed to alert authorities to the presence of cornered pirates or other criminals. In the Empire only, of course.”
“Which would imply what?” inquired Tulva.
“It would imply, sir, that the Imperial officer who was assigned to investigate this case, the man who infiltrated your compound on Somu’e, tracked you to Haven and then tried to improvise when he realized you have an entire flotilla.”
“Wonderful.” Remarked a nearby bridge officer dryly.
Tulva exploded with rage, and without saying a word, caused the purple man’s peanut shaped-head to implode. The bridge grew eerily silent until Tulva spoke, again calm. “I want you to bring us out of subspace, and set a direct hyperspace jump to Ten’reil to rally with the rest of the fleet. I think it is time for a little bait and switch.”
But as the two ships owned by the cult climbed out of subspace, they came face to face with the largest cruiser Tulva had ever seen bearing the emblem of the New Order of Dominion.
The October Sky.