The Syn-En Solution (29 page)

A true leader never shows weakness in front of his subordinates.

During times of trial, he demonstrates strength of purpose, certainty of actions and unwavering determination.

Principles of Leadership

Syn-En
Vade Mecum

Chapter Fifteen

21 Days Later

Bei strode to the center of the
Starfarer’s
bridge, the spring in his step tempered by the knowledge of all he must accomplish today. All that he could lose. Fear overrode his cerebral interface to force his heart into a staccato beat. This was it. The moment of truth.

They would either open an event horizon or die.

If he failed, Nell would number among the casualties.

“Your woman’s gone then?” XO Penig asked without turning from his position at the helm. His question echoed around the bridge. The crew had been evacuated so only the two of them remained, along with Shang’hai, who manned her station in engineering.

“Yes.” Bei clenched his hands at the more fatal implications of the question and crossed the half-moon shaped deck to stand beside his executive officer. He would not allow thoughts of losing his lover to distract him. And yet nothing seemed to keep them at bay.

“You’re sure?” Penig scratched the fringe of gray hair above his left ear. “I’ve found that women, enhanced or not, tend to be the more devious of the sexes. They’ll agree with you, then turn around and do the exact opposite. And somehow, it’s always us who didn’t understand.”

Penig angled his body toward Bei, deep grooves in his cheeks bracketing his smile. His eyes turned to lumps of coal in their sockets, proof that he interfaced with CIC solely through the WA.

“I put Nell on
Starflight Three
, strapped her into the seat and watched it glide through the cargo bay doors.” Bei stared at his second in command’s black eyes, still not understanding how the sight of blackening eyes could invoke such revulsion in citizens. Nell had rattled on about demons, eyes being the windows to the souls, and other superstitious nonsense. But she had been naked, and he had wanted to know if she’d make that amazing sound in the back of her throat if he touched her just—

Penig grunted. The six LCDs banding the bridge flickered to life. “And did you check the cargo bay to see if she’d snuck out the emergency hatch?”

“No.” Bei rubbed his chin before summoning his avatar, knowing once his consciousness merged with the digital man, his own eyes would be as dark as the heart of a singularity. Another reason for Nell to be away from here. He hated to remind her of their differences. Despite the incredible closeness they’d achieved in the last three weeks, he sensed her unease. He hoped her doubts were about getting to the planet alive. Hell, he had his, even with reassurances from his scientists.

And the odds were stacked against them.

The
Starfarer
could give them only one shot, a mere twelve minutes six point two seconds until her engines overloaded from the stress of maintaining a focused magnetic field. Shang’hai, Penig and Bei would be lucky to make it last that long without a surge frying their interfaces and brains. But a handful of seconds less meant the
America
and her escorts would crash into the Fleet and the Syn-En race would come to an explosive end.

At least that was the scenario in the original plan. But plans changed. Instead of waiting for the
America
to sail through first, Bei and his senior staff decided to send the remains of the original fleet through before she arrived. Nell would be in the first wave, followed by Commander Keyes and Chief Rome. They would lead whatever was left of the fleet to Terra Dos.

They would survive.

Bei clung to the thought, despite the ache banging around his chest at the idea that Nell might go on without him.

Penig brought up the aft starboard visuals on the two right hand bridge LCDs. Three waves of dark ships freckled the white luminescent background of the wormhole. “Fifteen minutes before the Starcruiser
America
reaches us.”

Using the CIC, Bei brought up long range sensors on the two far left screens. The
America’s
dark hull approached like a shark in white water and swallowed the visuals of her twenty escort ships in her bulk. Only
Jane’s
identification marks on the screens told of their presence. Bei watched twenty digital versions of his pink haired engineer swarm the boxy engine, navigation and electromagnetic shielding mainframes. “How much longer until engines and shields are aligned, Shang’hai?”

The miniature versions bumped into each other, merging and growing until one full-sized avatar remained. She smiled, and fireworks, a digital representation of her excitement exploded around her head. “Engines and shields are ready, Admiral. Wilson and I are just double checking the forward laser cannons. He thought if we could tighten the electromagnetic beam, we might keep the event horizon open an additional twenty-three seconds.”

Bei scanned for any crewmen still on his ship. The CIC recognized four ident chips and his temper flared. “Wilson should have evacuated the
Starfarer
with everyone else.”

Shang’hai’s avatar turned red and apologies appeared in white bubbles near her head. “You said it yourself, Bei. We only have one shot at this. And while I can do a lot through the WA, sometimes I need another set of hands. Wilson has very nice hands.”

The apologies disappeared in a mist of lust and longing that Bei had come to know only too well these last three weeks. With all the
Starfarer’s
life pods gone and the two newly minted
Starflight
shuttles launched, Bei had no choice but to let the civilian stay. But he didn’t have to like it. “Finish your checks.”

“Aye, Admiral.” Shang’hai’s avatar beamed at him before bursting apart and running in twelve different directions.

“Damn sneaky.” Penig chuckled as the digital version of the bald XO disappeared into the telemetry hub.

White luminescence filled the two LCDs in front of Bei, and sensors scanned the proposed exit in the wall of the wormhole. He strolled through cyberspace to the navigation hub and diverted the streams of sensor data into its processor. A clock appeared on all six screens. The countdown estimated the
America’s
arrival in eleven minutes. Eleven minutes? They should have had the event horizon open by now. Bei verified the calculations before isolating the cause of the shifted timetable. “Sensors show the
America’s
coming in too hot.”

Penig’s avatar stepped around the telemetry console, holding packages with red, high priority tags. He fed the orders into the communication stream where they would exit the hull and shoot at lightspeed toward the
America
and her flotilla of ships. Penig switched the com to the navigation hub. “
Beagle
and
Nebula
escorts are attempting to delay her arrival.”

Bei eyed the countdown. The clock jumped up a second, then two. He waited. No further change. Ten minutes, forty-six seconds. Their revised plan was now behind schedule. “Shanghai, finish your final checks. I want mission status green in ten seconds.”

Her pink-haired avatars converged on a heap of spaghetti-thin wires. A dozen sets of arms began plugging leads into a panel of holes associated with the laser cannons. “Aye, Admiral. You’ll have it in nine.”

Bei unleashed his command code on the CIC. The safety locks clicked open for all the
Starfarer’s
systems. He might lose his ship, but his men would live. “Forward fleet check in.”

“All ships report ready for Operation Exodus.” Commander Keyes’s crisp words filled the com and resounded on the bridge.

Bei pulled his consciousness back to his body, but kept his avatar ready to act at the speed of his thoughts. “What about the surplus?”

It galled Bei to speak of his own people in such callous terms, but he couldn’t afford the emotional distraction of remembering the capsule-shaped life pods as full of his men. He’d ordered the evacuation of the
Starfarer
to give them a chance to make it to Terra Dos. Yet there hadn’t been enough room to house the soldiers on the fleet’s ships, and the civilians were too fragile to endure the cramped conditions of the life pods.

But today, their voyage would end.

If Bei, Shang’hai and Penig succeeded, the Syn-En and their civilian comrades would enter Terra Dos’s orbit within six hours.

Keyes’s soft voice returned Bei to the bridge. “All life pods are netted, and wardens are waiting to drag them through the event horizon.”

“Good.” Bei shuffled the view on the forward screen to the aft starboard sensors. The boxy wardens bobbed on the tidal forces. Cream colored life pods were strung like pearls on the cables connecting the wardens. Three layers deep. Each kilometer long rope held one fourth of his crew.

Penig walked back to the captain’s seat in the center of the bridge, sat down and strapped himself in. His eyes gleamed like onyx. With his physical body secured, the XO would merge his consciousness with the CIC to whittle reaction time. “ETA on the
America
is ten minutes, Admiral.”

Bei nodded, eyed the ever growing arrow-shaped
America
and her escorts on the right hand screens before switching his attention to the middle screens and refocusing the middle LCDs on the targeted area of the wormhole. “Shang’hai, power up fusion drives.”

“Aye.” Shang’hai’s avatars glommed into one as she divided her attention between cyberspace and the engine room. “Fusion drives at fifty percent. Sixty. Seventy.”

Under Bei’s boots, the
Starfarer
hummed to life. He felt the currents of power eddying around him. She was a good ship. If she did not survive, he hoped she died well. He could think of no finer end for a warship or her soldiers.

“Engines at ninety.” Shang’hai’s voice was flat and, in the CIC, her avatar leaned against the engine interface. “One hundred percent power, Admiral.”

Bringing the engines online was the easy part. They’d practiced this routine daily since the repairs and modifications. During the sim, five minutes after opening the event horizon, events began their death spiral.

Penig’s body straightened in the captain’s chair. “Delta probes reporting instability along the wormhole.”

Bei’s avatar sprang to life, analyzing the probes’ data while Bei searched the screen for any noticeable change in the fog of white on the LCDs. He knew better than to think his chief engineer would act without orders, but he had to know for certain. “Shang’hai?”

“It’s not me, Admiral.” Even her pink-haired avatar shrugged and flashed her palms, denying responsibility.

The elevator doors zipped open and footsteps rasped against the metal decking. Bei closed his eyes. He knew those footfalls. Hell, they were practically encoded on his audio sensors. Nell. But how?

“I think the citizens have been lobbing nukes at the event horizon near Earth, causing the instability.”

His lover’s pleasant notes stirred Bei’s anger, and it had nothing to do with her confirming the
America’s
assessment of the citizens’ tactics. He’d put the damn woman on the shuttle himself, watched it fly away. How had this happened? He pivoted on his heel, breaking his connection to CIC so she would see his blue eyes.

“Dammit, Nell. Why aren’t you off my ship?”

Executive officer Penig closed his eyes, but his chuckles flowed freely around the room.

If the XO said ‘I told you so’ Bei would pinch his head off and use it as a soccer ball.

“My place is with you.” Nell walked to Bei’s side and placed her hand on his forearm like they were about to stroll along Mars’s Borealis Basin to watch Phobos and Deimos set.

Bei shook off her touch and latched onto her shoulders, careful not to crush the delicate bones. He had to keep her safe. She was too important to the mission, to the survival of his people,
to him
. “Your place is where I damn well tell you.”

“Now Beijing.” She smiled at him, flashing the slightly overlapping front teeth.

“Don’t Beijing me.” Bei raked his hands through his short black hair, lacing then locking his fingers behind his head. He barely resisted the urge to fold her up, stuff her into an air tight drum and shoot her through the event horizon. Shit. Her presence had caused him to forget his mission. Already time worked against them. It was too late to send her away, but not to drive home his point. “When I give an order, I expect you to follow it.”

“And I do.” She tucked her hand though the crook of his arm and leaned against him. “Most of the time.”

His body responded automatically. Bei clamped down on the rising desire. Now was not the time. “Status, Shang’hai.”

“Fusion engines ready, Admiral.”

Penig nodded. “ETA of
America
in nine minutes. If we want our people out first, we need to move.”

“Power up the array.” Bei swore under his breath. Even if he did box her up, there was no time to get Nell off his ship. His place was on the bridge. Nell squeezed his arm and smiled up at him.

“Aye, Admiral.” Shang’hai’s voice resonated around the bridge. “Diverting power from fusion engines. Twenty percent power.”

He felt the tug on his metallic limbs as the electromagnetic charge gathered in the front cannons. “We will speak of this later.”

Nell shrugged, her gaze darting from him to the middle screens. “What’s to talk about?”

The lights on the bridge dimmed and Bei’s sensors registered a drop in temperature. Life support would be drained of power to maintain the magnetic stream. Yet another reason to have fragile biologics safely away. He drew her into his embrace, sharing his body heat as he felt her shiver against him. “Who will lead our people to Terra Dos if we fail, Nell?”

“We won’t fail.” Nell kissed his jaw before stepping out of his arms. Without a backward glance, she walked to the emergency panel and grunted as she twisted it to break the magnetic seal. When she dropped it, the door clanged to the metal deck. She reached inside the compartment and removed an emergency evac suit.