Twenty-five
The courier crossed the Betalinon Corridor, home of
the Alazhir Alliance, a minor galactic arm twenty thousand light-years in
length, five in width, and heavily populated by late generation stars rich
in heavy elements. Humanity had originated elsewhere in the galaxy.
Nobody knew exactly where, except that dangers lurked among the stars, and
the Corridor was a relative haven, perhaps a refuge policed by the
stargods.
Forty known evolving nonhuman species shared the
Betalinon Corridor with the human race, each and every population center
strictly off limits to the other. Alliance craft attempting to approach
those worlds within a four light-year sphere simply disappeared, clear
evidence that the young worlds were being protected by a higher
intelligence. Myla had thought it amusing in grade school to think of a
whole part of a galaxy set aside as a nursery.
Myla wondered if it wasn't the reason the aliens
following Jeep didn't just sweep in and destroy everything in their path.
They seemed capable of doing so. Perhaps there were rules and regulations
of engagement to follow.
Myla had time during the pursuit to glance at Jeep
from time to time and wonder if she would have time to try to communicate
with the creature and satisfy her growing curiosity about Jeep's origin,
her destination, and the story behind the strange craft following in the
distance.
The Hive followed close behind like a swarm of
enraged insects. The Alliance hung a bit further back, a far more
dangerous threat in the long run, although they didn't seem to know for
sure what was going on. Myla maintained hyperlight velocity with the
propulsion field within ten percent of pinch-off, the point at which the
courier would accelerate to infinite speed and find itself in an entirely new universe of its own
creation. Even the slightest deviations of field strength could prove
disastrous, and did from time to time for the tailing Hive warcraft. On
more than one occasion, she saw a craft wink out of existence, lost forever in eternity and the distant reaches of
the universe.
Running accomplished nothing except for the time she
needed to think and to lure both the Hive and the Alliance far beyond easily accessed reserves.
The field engines would become far too unstable beyond the gravitational
influence of the galaxy to risk entering that greater void, so she would
have to stop soon and make a stand. She would do so out here among the
red dwarf halo stars hanging in a faintly glowing cloud around the nucleus
of the galaxy. Her entourage of hijacked Hive spacecraft included an
assortment of mining and manufacturing equipment, giving her the means to
replenish her own forces once she locked horns with the Hive. With the
red dwarf suns spaced at many hundreds of light-years from one another,
the Hive would be stranded in the void with no raw resources of their own with which to
replace their own damaged warcraft.
Myla helped Dikki select a destination and guide
their ragtag Hive armada into a planetary system of two small worlds and a
dark belt of rocks and dust centered by a brilliant glowing ruby of a
sun. "You're going to be my business manager," she announced to Dikki.
"What does our Hive entourage need to set up shop here?"
"Mining and manufacturing require an invoice," Dikki
said. "Defensive mechanisms require a defined perimeter and a security
definition."
"Our security definition will be to defend this
system against all intruders," Myla said. "Let's declare our defensive
perimeter just outside the orbit of the ring of planetary debris. We
don't want the Hive to have access to that. Anything that gets damaged
defending our position I want put on the invoice to be replaced from the
factories. In fact, I think we should replace everything lost by a factor
of ten."
"Initial system mapping and resource inventory is
required," Dikki said.
Myla understood the procedure. "Send the probes out
now."
Dikki went to work detailing her orders and
disseminating orders to the disorderly cloud of Hive equipment surrounding
the courier. "I didn't know we brought along so much stuff," she
murmured, unsettled by her accomplishment and the uncanny ease with which
it had all transpired. "I just grabbed anything in reach. How soon will
the Hive attack?"
"Assault commencing at this
very moment."
A scattering of tiny suns flickered on the edge of
the planetary system, and Myla felt the census of her equipment diminish
slightly. Her own Hive warships, tricked into complying with Dikki as
their executive program, lashed out at the attacking forces with only
moderate success. The Hive had brought heavier weapons along to do battle
and made effective use of them with their centralized system of command.
Myla tweaked the automatic defensive systems of her
own forces by advancing the lighter, more maneuverable craft closer to the
incoming forces, and targeting her heavier weapons from a greater
distance. When the flares of deadly light from her own machines began to
erode incoming Hive forces more effectively, she turned her attention to
the miners and the factories penetrating the belt of planetoids.
"Wow, look how fast they work."
In almost no time, the miners were taking apart the
larger of the planetoids. The factories were small machines initially,
mere seeds that quickly grew in size and complexity until platforms many
kilometers across began manufacturing components, and assembly areas began
spitting out everything from full-sized warcraft to equipment engineered
to either repair or recycle damaged warcraft. "That's why so many people
died in the Hive War," she commented to Dikki.
"Machines are more quickly replaced than people,"
Dikki said.
"People had machines of their own to pit against the
Hive, didn't they?"
"The conflict on that level was a stalemate," Dikki
said. "The Hive targeted human populations. The Hive had
no such losses to suffer."
"So people had to get involved in their own
self-defense. Who would have won if they hadn't killed Dalikor and quit?"
Dikki hesitated before answering. "The Hive and the
Alliance both believe they would have lost, not to one another, but to
Dalikor himself, an avatar with an independent brain and mind engineered
from the Mysaelia biochemistry. They feared his power."
"And if he had survived?
Would he have won the war?"
"Undoubtedly," Dikki said.
"Humanity would have taken terrible losses, but it would have freed itself
of the Hive centuries ago."
"I wonder sometimes about Dalikor," Myla said. "They
say he could command entire armadas of warcraft, like I’m doing, but it's
not all that hard. The Hive is terribly simple-minded. Still, if I can do it, I don't understand
why the Techs haven't been able to defend themselves better during all of
these hundreds of years of oppression. Maybe it takes a Nat to do what
has to be done. Do you suppose? Jeremy's afraid of his own shadow. So
is Khalin. They're so terribly afraid of getting their real bodies hurt
or killed."
"I am unable to evaluate
the human element," Dikki said. "I have encountered too many unknown and indeterminate factors to
attempt a calculation."
Myla rapidly lost sixty percent of the haphazard
military force she had brought along. The Hive lost forty percent before
ceasing hostilities and moving back out of harm's way. Knowing that she
didn't have anywhere to go, the Hive formed a defensive stance and radioed
distance nodes for reinforcement.
Neither could the Alliance afford to take losses so
far away from home. They, too, kept a safe distance and watched and
waited. Behind them, Jeep's strange enemies glimmered in the eternal
night, ominously green and alien.
"Dikki, I'll bet you that those alien ships aren't
going to bother us until they know for certain Jeep's location." Myla
glanced across the cabin at Jeep. She felt a stab of guilt and pity
when she looked to the curled-up mud dragon. "Is this little monster still alive?"
"Less so than before," Dikki said.
"It needs water. Do we have water?"
"We have no water."
That disclosure alarmed Myla briefly. She hadn't had
anything to drink or eat in ages. She hadn't needed toilet facilities for
almost as long. And Jeep. She glanced up at the graceful little alien
and sighed. "I can't tell if she's okay or not. She just stands there
and stares at me."
Myla remembered the two inner planets of the system
they had taken refuge within. She turned her attention back to Dikki's
internal web of accumulating information.
The first planet of the system was close to the sun
and molten. The second planet took her by surprise. It had shallow seas
and oxygen in its atmosphere. Nothing lived on the land, but the seas
were purple-green with plant-like growth. Temperatures were on the cool
side. Atmospheric pressure, though, was hardly adequate. "Do the Hive
factories have any plans for human-style pressure domes for inhospitable
environments?" she said.
Dikki provided a menu. Myla went through it and
picked out an emergency dome suitable for fifty people stockpiled with
food and water and even a personnel cabin for privacy to put in the middle
of the dome. It was a plan the Hive had never accessed even once.
"Have it delivered and set up on the second planet,
equatorial region, a couple hundred feet from one of the seas, just a
random location, but one with stable weather. And I'll need a skiff delivered here.
You can stay parked in orbit and Jeep and I will take the mud dragon
down to the surface. It'll give me a chance to try to talk to her. There must be a
way."
"Acknowledged," Dikki said, and her orders were set
into motion.
