Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax (32 page)

That night as Kala and I returned to the
NEW ORLEANS,
I feared that Kala would begin fussing at me about the events of the expedition and the dangers encountered; however, I was surprised when she was far more sympathetic and understanding.

“Tib, I was a bit upset at first about you having gone on this expedition when you could have sent others, but then I realized that part of the reason I love you so much is that you never expect others to do something you wouldn’t do yourself, and you are willing to put yourself in harm’s way to prove it.  That’s a sign of a great leader in my mind.  It’s selfish of me to expect less of you, especially if those are the qualities in you that I find most attractive.”

I tried to digest that, as it was kind of circular thinking, but I decided not to press my luck on the matter.  Fortunately, Kala continued talking.

“Tibby, what’s your impression of Truath?  Do you really think we look similar?”

“The two of you share a lot of similar facial features,” I replied.  “She seems to be an intelligent person, she was very helpful to us by being able to communicate with the Uhangi.  I never would have been able to pull that off on my own.  I didn’t understand anything it was saying even after it was translated to Federation standard speech.”

“Do you think she is pretty?”  Kala asked in a tone that sent alarm bells off in my head.

“Well, she is attractive, but she’s not you.  You are far more attractive than she is.”

“Really?  How so?”

I hate conversations like this with a woman; there is no way it’s going to work out well.  Conveniently, we reached our suite before I answered and were greeted by the sounds of squealing twins as we entered the door.  In the next room, I saw Jenira chasing after a naked Reidecor as Lunnie was pulling clothing items out of the clothing replicator.  Kala immediately ran into the room to stop Lunnie, as a laughing Reidecor came running to me with his arms held out.  I grabbed him quickly swinging him into the air as I said, “Well, young man.  What kind of trouble are you giving Jenira tonight?”  By now, a red-faced Jenira was standing in front of me frantically signing, “He tried to flush his blanket down the sanitation unit.”

“He did?  Didn’t he try to do that last week also?  I asked.

“He didn’t try. He did it.  It caused a system shutdown, and we had to get someone from engineering to come and fix it.  He’s as quick and sly as a Plebmonium Norax,” Jenira signed.

“Reide, why did you do that?”  I said using Lunnie’s nickname for him.  Reidecor shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands as he said, “I don’t know.”

“I can tell you why he did it,” Kala said as she came back in the room carrying a clearly unhappy Lunnie.  “He did it because he likes to see how everything works.  I tell you, Tibby if this kid ever gets loose on the ship with a screwdriver, he’ll have the ship apart in less than a day.”  I saw Jenira cover her mouth laughing when she heard Kala say this.

The next morning I received word A’Lappe wished to speak with me about the message from Ming.  He believed he had located the star pattern in the vid clip we’d asked him to analyze.  Since his and Cantolla’s lab were in the same location, and officially Truath would be working for Cantolla as my marine biologist, I decided that now would be as good a time as any to introduce her.  Truath and the rest of the crew from the submarine were scheduled to return to Irribis later that day, but once Truath had made arrangements for her personal belongings there, she would be transferring back to the
NEW ORLEANS
.  I wasn’t sure how Cantolla would react to my hiring another scientist without going through her first, as officially Cantolla was responsible for all the science team.  I was sure she would get over it, if she had any objections about it.

We were barely inside the lab when Cantolla looked up from some object she and A’Lappe were tinkering with.  She blinked like she was trying to clear her vision, and then she let out a yell, “Truath!” and Truath yelled “Cantolla!” and the two ran and embraced each other and kissed.  I stood there totally dumbfounded.  Immediately the two of them began talking at the same time so rapidly I could not make out any of what either were saying.  When they finally did slow down enough, I said rather louder than usual, so I would be heard, “So I take it the two of you know each other?”

Cantolla turned to me with a huge grin, “Know each other?  We were lovers for two years at the university.”

“You never mentioned you knew Cantolla,” I said to Truath.

“I didn’t realize then it was the same Cantolla.  I mean I heard you and others talking about Cantolla Gates, but I assumed it was a coincidence.  I never realized it was my Cantolla.”

“Truath and I graduated about the same time at the University of Essen,” Cantolla said, “at the time we were lovers, I was offered a job in the university, and I saw it as a huge opportunity for advancement, and Truath wanted to go off to Irribis to be a marine biologist.  We didn’t want to hold the other back from our dreams, and so we went our separate ways.  We haven’t seen each other since then.”

“I tried to contact you a few years ago,” Truath said, “but when I contacted the University, I was told you had left and gone to work as the head of a research team somewhere.  How did you wind up here?”

Cantolla laughed, “This is the place.  Tibby hired me to head up his research team, and I’ve been here ever since.  What are you doing here?”

“Look,” I interrupted them, “I’ll let the two of you catch up with each other's adventures, but for right now Truath is my new marine biologist responsible for all my aquatic life forms here on the ship, and back at the estate, and for any other marine related projects I may need her on.  As part of the science team, she will be answering to you, Cantolla; that is, if you don’t have any objections.”

“Objections?  Not hardly,” Cantolla said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Very well then, I’ll leave the two of you to get reacquainted while I talk with A’Lappe.”

A’Lappe and I stood there watching as Cantolla and Truath walked toward Cantolla’s office, the two of them holding hands.

“Tibby, is she related to Kalana?”  A’Lappe asked.

“No, not at all,” I answered.

“It’s odd how much she looks like Kalana, other than for her blond hair, that is.”

Suddenly, it hit me and it all made sense.  When I first hired Cantolla, she had made romantic overtures toward Kala, before she knew Kala and I were romantically involved.  This would have been shortly after she and Truath had parted ways before.  It would have been quite natural for her to be attracted to Kala, with Truath and Kala looking so much alike.

“Tibby, I ran these images through the computers, but it would have taken months if not years to isolate where these stars were that way.  So I eliminated all the places I was relatively sure Ming wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, at the time.  That reduced the area considerably, and then I eliminated all the sections of space where there were dense star patterns, as this area doesn’t have many.  That was when I noticed this faint fuzzy dot in the image.  See it… here?” he said as he pointed to it.

“Now watch when I zoom in on it,” he announced and the fuzzy dot on the screen expanded revealing a galactic cluster.  “That is the galaxy GN-349875 to be precise.  With that in mind, I could extrapolate the position where this vid was taken and identify the region where Ming was when this vid clip was made.”

“And just where is that?”  I asked.

“Here, the planet targeted is called Maisha.” A’Lappe answered as he brought a map of the galaxy in view, and he pointed at a star out on the galaxy rim.

“How far is it to the nearest Federation starship?”

“You’d have to ask the captain on one of your Federation ships for that data,” A’Lappe said.  “It’s classified information.”

I gave him a hard stare for a moment, and he tried to give me a blank innocent look as he blinked his eyes hypnotically before I said, “And since when has that stopped you from hacking into any and everything?” I asked.

A’Lappe pursed his lips and rolled his eyes as he reached across the console, and several dots lit up on the screen.  “These are the positions of the nearest Federation ships.”

“What is the quickest any of them could reach that star system?”

“Nearly a month,” he replied.

“What about Cantolla Gates, where’s the nearest one?”

Some green dots appeared on the screen even further away from the location of Ming’s broadcast.

“The closest one of these are nearly six weeks away from this location.  There is no way you can get a ship there in time to help them.”

“How about a message, can we warn them?  Do they have the latest communication systems or a DSC system?”  I asked.

“I’m afraid not, Tibby. Their planet hasn’t received communication equipment updates so far, and even if it was offered to them, they might not accept it.  The citizens of this planet shun most modern technology.  They only have rudimentary electricity.  They use animals to cultivate their farms and have little to no mechanized equipment.”

“How are they in the Federation at all if that’s the case?”  I asked.

“They do have a unified government, more of a theocracy actually, but they have no wars or conflicts.  They trade handcrafted goods, minerals, and exotic foods they produce for the rest of the Federation in exchange for medicines and a few other imports they need but can’t produce locally.”

“So you’re telling me these poor people are going to be wiped out and there is nothing we can do to stop it or help them?”

“I’m afraid so.  I’m sorry, Tibby, but there isn’t any way to save them.”

I unexpectedly realized that I was experiencing pain in my hands, and I looked down to see that I had my fists balled, and my fingernails were digging into my palms.  I relaxed my grasp, but inside I was tense with anger.

“Damn that Ming.  I swear I will haunt him to the ends of the universe if I have to, and I will make him pay for his actions.”

I took the data that A’Lappe had given me and took it back to the
DUSTEN,
where I met with Rear Admiral Regeny, and Admirals Wabussie, Stonbersa, and Kophious as well as Captain Slater.

“So, gentlemen, you can see the dilemma we are in at the moment,” I said after I had briefed them on details of the events at Irribis and A’Lappe’s finding.  “Does anyone have any comments or suggestions?”

“What are you planning to do about this world that is going to be destroyed?”  Admiral Kophious asked.

“You tell me; it’s in your sector,” I replied, “what can you do?”

Kophious looked at me with a shocked look.  “Well, we must do something?!  He exclaimed.

“I’m open to any proposals,” I stated.

Everyone was quiet for a few minutes, and I noticed they all were averting their eyes, and no one was making eye contact.

“I’m afraid Ming is right, there is nothing we can do to prevent this.  We can’t communicate with the people there to warn them, though I have no idea what they could do if we did, since they have no spaceships of their own to stop the asteroid, nor do they have any means of escaping.  This is one reason why it is imperative that we get Cantolla Gates set up in every sector and on every planet, and we need to make it a priority.  A’Lappe tells me there are over 1.7 billion people on that planet.  One point seven billion that in a few days will all be gone.  Ming threatened to destroy a world every time we thwart his plans.  We know we have to stop Ming, but we also must protect our citizens.

“Stonbersa and Kophious, I need you both to get as many patrol ships out with Cantolla Gate components to every planet in your sectors and see to it there is at least one Cantolla Gate on every world.  I know that’s going to take a lot of ships away from the fleet, for the time being, but we need to do it.  I want to see every world in the Federation with a Cantolla Gate in one year.”  I saw a look of shock on the faces on both Stonbersa and Kophious as I issued the order.”  Admiral, that’s going to significantly reduce our defensive power in the fleet.  What if we are attacked, or engage the Brotherhood in a battle?”  Stonbersa asked.

“Your ships are protected with the RMFF’s and you have cloaking, so you’re not going to be damaged, but your offensive capability will be reduced for the time being.  However, now that we have the
MAXETTE
built and more like her under construction, I am hoping to use those ships to take the offensive to the enemy.  We struck a heavy blow to them at Windsor, and the base we destroyed at Irribis.  Once Ming gets word of it, I suspect he will plan to take revenge by taking out another world.

“We need to be prepared.  One thing we do know is that Ming currently is in Sector 3; your sector, Admiral Kophious.  That’s not too far from Weccies, and we know the Brotherhood has been planning on trying to raid Weccies.  I’m taking the
MAXETTE
there to lay an ambush for him.  I want two starships one from the second fleet and one from the first, to accompany me there.  The advanced crew we sent to that sector to set up a ship-sized Cantolla Gate should be there soon and have the gate operational, and I want to move the ships there by the end of the week.  We’ll wait there cloaked, for the Brotherhood to show up.  A’Lappe has developed some new torpedoes that can penetrate an RMFF field, but they are slowed down going through the shield.  We only will have a few; probably not more than three or four for each of our star ships in this offensive, as they are difficult to produce and require a lot of power, so we will have to be conservative in their use.  It’s doubtful we will be able to destroy their starships, but we should be able to do enough damage to scare them off.  They will see us penetrating their defenses, but they won’t know how many torpedoes we have, and hopefully they will think we have more than we do and they will run.”