Chapter 3

It took a complete cycle to get my ship back. The reason the entire seventy two days were needed was primarily because of the tests on the weapon system. The adults came to the conclusion that the weapon could not be adequately used on our mother ship. It could be used to take out enemies on only one side of the ship. The feeling was that a small agile ship was needed to escort the mother ship. Odava, Borin and I were elected or really Borin.

My ideas about more reactors had been accepted. Slightly larger engines had replaced the ones I had upgraded to. My composite inertial and temporal compensator received a serious upgrade. The shielding was made as strong as possible. Borin's personality was shifted into a much more robust computer that would be a proper brain for a war machine.

The adults took time testing the ship on various targets and performance ratings of the hull were also completed. Some equipment was altered again then more tests done. It wasn't until the adults became bored in the small hull that Odava and I got it back.

The details of the ship along with the weapon itself were heavily encrypted and sent back along with all our other data. It wasn't even 'Home Day' when we did it but it was rated as an important event.

Odava's family and Odava himself went into the medical tanks to take care of all their ailments. In the process each was altered so that their thinking would improve many times. While in the tank it was thought that their history should be added so they would understand more when they got out.

The Gossna all looked young when they emerged. Minute changes had been made in their chromosomes so that all their children would have enough variation to not fall into the trap they had been in. It came none too soon for the Gossna are usually laid back and governed a lot by customs. These thirteen found themselves very sexually aroused. This meant that within days we had new life forming in the fertile females.

The Seffra would not allow this for themselves but there were never enough Gossna. Their race was looked on as something we should preserve even if we could usually do the technical work as good as they could.

We now had to stay close to the mother ship instead of performing our own surveys. It soon turned to a boring task but I found time to learn as did Odava. He turned out to be a project too in a way for I drilled him as much as I could to get him the best trained possible.

My early success in this matter found one other young Gossna and three young girls now flying with me for the training. They stood their own watches and took some of the workload from my shoulders. For this to happen though the safety protocols the computer had to deal with were changed. We were less of a warship now and much more of a school.

The children were rotated in and out of my ship but Odava and I stayed together even when somebody else took the ship out for their stint. When they came back I could see that they didn't take that environment as well as I did. They lived to be with their families and I could get along with a bit less and still be happy.

A little over seven cycles after finding Odava and his family, we found another world with a viable Gossna population. They didn't have that high of a technology but had regained space after falling back. We managed to retain our own Gossna and even found twenty seven more that would join us. Most of these were young adults that had the ability to choose for themselves.

When we left a cycle later we had still not found any additional references to our energy weapon or to any more of the dark crystals. Odava though found a female friend by the name of Ichom. He was of an age to marry but the girl was not there yet. She also was not trained though she had spent some time in the tank to get her mind in shape.

I didn't know how this would turn out and felt worried. I may get a married pair of Gossna in my crew or loose Odava to another duty. It would be at least a year though till the female would be old enough for a matchmaker to tell them the obvious.

Ichom turned out to stay with us during her training. I think Soldoy knew what was happening and tried to keep us as a group I was again afraid that being so close together would cause her to want to take Odava to another job. My own family took them in many times and they acted as quietly as what a Gossna would expect. The other Gossna tended to stay together because we were much too quick in movement and thought.

Borin flew into the boat bay for a partial refit and an unneeded inspection. The adults of the children still wanted to know that the ship was the safest possible. We had a crew of six as usual though we could take twice that many. We were restricted though because we only had six stasis pods. Even these were beefed up with their own power supplies and additional shielding.

Our simple escape pods were similarly checked along with the small ship I made before I altered my plans for the test. It too could hold six but would be very cramped.

The refit turned out to be a slightly improved energy conduit to power the crystal. We found that at a great range, the beam played over a large area without the needed penetration. Now the crystal could be shifted very slightly to keep it focussed in one place long enough to hole the ship or cut the ship in two if there was time.

Some small conventional antimatter missiles were added but a secondary energy weapon was removed. This was a good tradeoff because our secondary energy weapon was not that powerful.

We left with one change in our roster. Mino was a girl a few years younger than me. She was driven to learn like the rest and seemed to be doing a good job. Fera and Consti were sisters with the later being my age of now twelve and her younger sister of eight. The younger sister seemed to be a bit unsure of herself and needed her older sister to guide her. They had all sailed with me before and this was a refresher course but this time we would get to test the weapon.

The girls on our main ship were taking a new look at me. I seemed to be doing something right for each time I came into the bay I found I was getting more and more girls that wanted to get better acquainted.

For this to happen I had to release the bounds on my body and I felt a surge of hormones. Sometimes I did this preparatory to docking so I could be ready when needed. So far none were suitable for a long term commitment but I tried to be nice about it. One day I would start a family and do it right.

I was not as shy as I was before and would link with each of the ladies. They were not very secure in their minds and usually the whole ship knew that one or usually more young ladies would be very happy.

Father congratulated me the first few times and gave a few pointers that would increase my girl's passion without being too hard on my own body. After the first time with Jona, I did not release any seed. This helped me last much longer and was one more way of cutting down on a chance pregnancy.

Our race lived long enough that any woman could conceive thousands of children. We were responsible beings and tried to keep our numbers manageable for our limited resources. If we one day settled on a planet then we could have as many children as we could handle.

My family and the family of the others saw us off though we would not be that far from the ship. Even though we could communicate over four lights with multiple relays, we had to stay only four away.

Odava was the usual pilot unless another needed the practice. This first watch everybody would be awake but the second required that some get a rest for their watch later.

At the end of the watch we came onto another system and we did the usual checks. Ichom reported, "I found an energy pulse as we came close to the system."

I asked, "What did it appear to be?"

"It looked like a small ship or robotic probe boosting at maximum."

"Did you get a course on it?"

"It was at the end of our range. If they had used less power I may not have seen it at all."

I contacted Soldoy and reported the incident. He was further back and to one side to notice the trace. I said, "I would like to investigate."

It took a bit longer than I liked but permission did come. I altered course and flew around the system to come on the back side. Sometimes systems were protected by more than just robotic missiles and mines. The location was not that clear but we did a search before finding a trail of ionized gas that was consistent with a small ship under power. We followed it for a few minutes to get a bearing but flew back. We were under orders to not get far from the mother ship.

Many more probes than usual were sent into the system but we found nothing odd. It was a system devoid of life and only had one small planet. It was given a good inspection before continuing our planned course.

I was uncomfortable with the small ship disappearing. The course taken was not even to a neighbouring system but toward galactic centre. This could mean that it was in route to meet some ship or ships to report out arrival.

We were all more vigilant but there were a great many civilisations that were flying between stars. Not all were bad and most could be termed neutral. They usually didn't want to have a fight and worked on trade. That didn't discount the odd crazy race that would take on a ship the size of Soldoy. We were not that big as warships went but we were very well armed so we could complete our mission.

A half day later we entered the next system. On the way we intercepted old style simple electromagnetic communication. We captured a stream of it then stretched the signal out to see what was transmitted. It happened to be a type of visual and audio communication. Borin analysed it a bit more before saying, "It is a form of entertainment broadcast widely through the atmosphere instead of digitally. It is quite wasteful of power."

We approached this system the same as all the others but the probes reported that the usual signals coming from the planet had abruptly stopped. Light would have taken twelve days to reach this point so it looked like something happened that many days ago. I had been studying natural disasters on a planetary surface and I could not see anything that would stop all transmission.

Soldoy knew what we knew and our main ship stopped. We were given orders to continue to see what we could without getting into trouble. We stayed well back and let the probes search for us. When they got to the planet we found a spindle type of space craft around it. Immediately I ordered the probes to cut back on energy and sent a message the short distance to Soldoy telling him that we found the Suma feeding off of a low tech world. Our own engines stopped and we dropped to only half of light speed.

We continued our surveillance and found three large troop carriers that were usually used to transport their livestock. This livestock had been intelligent to communicate with each other using electromagnetic waves. There was a destroyer and some small escort ships.

The lizard like creatures were about three metres tall. We had a great hate for them since they put some of our planets on the dinner table. Usually we fought them if we could but the destroyer was almost our size. The troop carriers were usually only lightly armed.

A recall order arrived and we slowly stopped before equally slowly heading back to our mother ship. Odava and Ichom were very worried but did their duties well nevertheless. Mino, Fera and Consti did their job too but Fera acted with the most fear; then again she was the youngest.

We took up our position protecting one of our mother ship's flanks when a very important decision was to be made. I knew the capabilities of our weapon and figured we could take out the destroyer very easily. The troop transports too could easily be destroyed but all of the captives on the ships would die as well.

Even the clean up on the planetary surface might take twelve cycles or more to complete. We didn't have the crew to fight these kind of battles. We were primarily explorers and scientists.

Fera started to cry and her sister comforted her but still stayed at her station. The situation was just a bit too tense for a girl that young. The discussion lasted an hour and we were given orders to leave the system because there was nothing we could do.

This all changed a second later. Pickets had been put out much further than usual because of the current situation. They detected a flotilla of ships coming our way from the system we just left. From the signatures, we knew that they were Suma ships and would have much more firepower than us. The only way to escape was to proceed through the system we wanted to avoid. One of our advantages was that we found a way to circumvent a law of physics. This ensured that other ships had to slow down when they got close to a primary.

The Mardaf Limit in this case was twelve light minutes from the primary. We would only have to slow down to fifty three lights while others had to actually drop below light speed.

Orders now were quickly delivered and we fled the advancing Suma. We were commanded to take out the destroyer ahead of us at maximum range then what other ships we could. Even the transports were to be targeted. If we were going down there would certainly be a few less Suma for others to worry about.

We were well within our maximum range and I used the probes already in the system as spotters. The destroyer exploded taking a few small ships with it. The transports started to flee without even knowing where the firing came from. The ships were not fast and it took less than half a second to find their reactors and put them out of commission. This resulted in an explosion that destroyed the ship.

The Suma behind us would not know of the attack yet but were coming within my range.