Chapter 195

"Daddy," Arlene said to her father as she entered his lab office in the basement, "I have a couple of hours before I have to get dressed for the wedding. Could we start my training now?"

The Prime got up, walked around his desk and took his daughter's face in his hands, kissing her firmly. "Now's a perfect time. Let's go talk to the Ship."

As they came to the door of the inside garage, Arlene reached for a coat, but Jeff stayed her hand. "It takes only a couple minutes to jog to the Ship. You can ignore the cold that long."

"You can, but I can't," she responded, "but I suppose I won't freeze."

As they stepped out into the cold, "Tell yourself that you're warm, then focus on something else other than the cold."

As Jeff led off, Arlene tried, and it may have helped a little, but she was shivering when she stepped through the hatch into the Ship a couple of minutes later. Admittedly she wasn't sure the shiver was from cold or worry of the unknown she was about to face.

After a walk down the corridor to the bridge, the two reclined into the command couches, but Jeff's couch didn't cocoon around him.

"Daddy, will you stay with me?" Arlene asked, trying to speak in a voice that didn't reveal fear.

She needs to do this without you, the Ship projected to her commander.

"Uh, Baby, the Ship would rather you do this alone."

"But how does she teach?" Arlene queried, sitting erect.

"Well, to start with, she uses a very realistic sim..."

Prime, I had rather you not describe my training methods, the Ship interrupted.

"Uh, Baby, let's just let her explain things," he said as he felt the couch pushing against him. Standing, he kissed his daughter/wife and walked off the bridge.

She will be fine, my Prime, the Ship assured him.

I don't totally agree with you, he thought to the Ship. In addition to being my wife, she's my little girl. I can't forget that. I don't want her hurt.

You know my training methods. Are you forbidding me them?

Jeff stood for a moment. Then, No ... No. But just keep in mind that she's barely past being a child. Her experiences are limited, and she's only been in combat once, and you know the result of that. And...

... she has the heart of a warrior, and the ability to command, the Ship finished for him, although that wasn't what he had been going to say. I'll return her intact – stinging perhaps, but intact.

Forcing back his worry, the Prime left the Ship.

Arlene lay back in the second command couch, her body relaxed in a partial sitting position as if she were propped against pillows, reading in bed. Her position, however comfortable, hardly touched her awareness, though, as her mind swirled into the mass of intelligence that seemed to surround her. Although she had sat on the couch before, this time, she allowed herself to mesh more fully with the massive intelligence.

Thoughts swirled around her, through her – became part of her, and she part of the all-encompassing mind about her. Thoughts, feelings, scenes – all alien – swirled about her, combined with her. She saw the immensity of space surrounding her – felt it, embraced it, saw suns explode, observed planets spiral into the corona of their stars to be consumed there, witnessed weapons fired into worlds teaming with life, the worlds turning black, then exploding to snuff out all living things on the planets. And then her body spiraled into what she understood must be the dimensions. Space itself warped, morphed into something else. Feelings became tastes, tastes became sights – and she was somewhere alien...

Just under the speed of light, the mother-ship, in full stealth mode, dropped two probes and a scout ship. The probes were commanded by AI's, the scout by a physical being. The probes' trajectories gradually separated from the scout as all three drifted toward the only viable planet in the star system.

The probes and scout were armed, but the main weapon of each was stealth. Emissions of any type, drive signatures, heat – everything that could be controlled and dampened, was. Although all three tiny vessels were equipped with inertialess drives, they were locked off. One downside to the drive was a flare of energies when it was initialized. That drive flare from the mother-ship under full power could be picked up instantly by sensitive equipment out to roughly a quarter parsec. The inertialess drives of the scout and probes wouldn't register until much closer, but within the system, would still scream out a warning to sensitive equipment.

Even though the small ships of the tiny squadron drifted inward with their stealth equipment fully functional, their systems fully shielded, they still maintained near absolute zero inside, lest even a stray source of heat alert the enemy. The only thing keeping the biological being alive was the skinsuit it wore – comfort was not a mainstay of the suit.

As the three neared the planet, they continued to slow, one probe entering atmosphere near the south pole of the planet, the other in a desert area on the opposite side of the world from the base that all three would eventually approach. The scout settled into a crevice in the deep snow near the north pole.

There had been no communication between the three after leaving the mother-ship. Now the biological being waited, all sensors scanning for signs that any of the three had been discovered – nothing. After a predetermined amount of time spent searching for evidence that any of them had been detected, the pilot slowly brought the scout out of the crevice. Someone only a few feet away would never have noticed the small ship. At this point, the little ship was invisible to any sensors yet devised, but now it would have to move and use energies that left a signature – slight, but the signature was there.

With a brush of the pilot's thoughts on the controls, the being turned the ship toward the massive base, gentling the scout's acceleration as the pilot remained hyper alert. All three were operating under time restraints. The pilot must have the information and beam it to a specific place at a designated time as the mother-ship snapped into existence a third of a parsec away. Whether the information was there or not, the ship would dimension out after a three second wait, the ship and what it contained too valuable to risk in a one-sided fight that would end in the mother-ship's certain destruction.

The mother-ship's several AI's gave this mission an eight-percent chance of success, with a slightly lower chance of the pilot's survival, but considering the lives – worlds – that could be saved with this venture, the mother-ship's commander had asked for volunteers. Naturally, every pilot there instantly volunteered. The commander and his staff considered the applicants and chose the best of the best. Unfortunately, that still left eleven pilots. The commander chose the final one by using a small lottery.

The pilot had used the scout's AI for approach to the planet and entry into atmosphere, but since leaving the crevice, the pilot had personally taken over the controls. AI's were faster than physical beings, smarter even, but in combat, they tended to think linearly, and oftentimes, could be anticipated. Now was not a time for linear – now was the time to think outside that infamous box.

The pilot passed over the snowy landscape, the temperature of the little ship exactly matching its surroundings. No air stirred when it passed – nothing marked its passage. Even in the frozen north, the pilot used the terrain as much as possible to conceal the scout, but there was a schedule to maintain. When the ship reached warmer surroundings, the piloting became more difficult. Even the brushing of a limb of vegetation might be noticed.

The pilot had by now been fully awake and active for many hours. With a mental touch, a stimulant brought instant wakefulness at the expense of energy that the pilot's body would have to pay back later – if there was a later.

Time drifted onward as the pilot sought out a route through the sensor net, striving to carve out a passage where the net was at its lowest intensity. Nerve wracking, constant choices drained the pilot's energy, made the pilot's mind numb from overuse and decisions that could mean instant death. Another mental touch and the stimulant again surged through the pilot's system.

Finally, the scout neared the base. Here, the sensor arrays seemed to overlap each other – the approach almost insurmountable without being detected. Struggling, the pilot eased the small craft forward. The pilot's sensors registered a surge of energy as a large weapon pod blinked to a stop, the unit using its inertialess drive. What made the pilot cringe was the stop was almost directly above the scout.

The pod sat there for a time, then in the distance, another pod fired its weapons. The base came to full alert, every sensor scanning at full potential. The pod above almost instantly fired a bracketing salvo in the same direction the first pod fired, and the salvo seemed to go on and on. There was an explosion a kilometer away and the pod above the scout flashed away, presumably to the area where the explosion occurred. The pilot knew that one of the AI's had met its doom.

A few seconds later, another weapons pod flashed to a stop not far from the scout. Reason dictated that the pilot lie quiet and wait – any movement, any system going on-line, could mean an instantaneous barrage of fire, but time was running out. A strong wind gusted from time to time. Without fully thinking it through, the pilot released the systems that kept the little ship anchored to its area a few feet from the ground.

The wind gusted again and the scout began to drift directly toward the weapons pod. A few minutes later, the pilot again anchored the scout at almost ground level a few meters below the pod. But the pilot had chosen the position for more than concealment. The new position was almost directly over a communications node. Of the two combatants in this war, the pilot's race had a distinct advantage in some areas of technology. Their latest advances were a very jealously guarded secret that they hoped their enemies would never learn about. The enemy didn't realize how vulnerable their communications systems were under certain conditions – those conditions had just been met when the scout settled within meters of the communication node.

The little ship's AI pounced on the energies of the node, working its way into the system within seconds, drinking of the contents. Since this was the enemy's main base, most of its operating strategies now lay within the reach of the AI: locations of commands, locations of the main battle armadas, the enemy's overall plan of coming actions, general and specific logic for the battle AI's for the bases and the fighting ships, the location of repair facilities, the supply routes and planets where the supplies were stored – the information went on and on.

The pilot fought fatigue as time passed and the storage crystals took in data that was beyond value. Another stimulus added to the others, far beyond the danger levels now, but some things were worth more than a mere pilot's life. Still the information came in – as time neared for a decision.

Finally, the AI had drained all the information it could, and the pilot sat thinking. But thinking did no good. There could only be one result if the information was delivered on time – on time, or not delivered at all. If the information wasn't transmitted at the precise instant, the mother-ship would be gone and all the information that could save the pilot's race would be lost forever.

The AI had plotted their course and the pilot had checked it again for the tenth time. Everything was in readiness. The time arrived. Arlene mentally slid the drive block aside, her mental finger poised over the button that would initiate the inertialess drive, would slam the little ship away from the planet at an acceleration that, without the drive, would have turned her body to liquid and spread it across the bulkheads, if ... even they could have withstood the acceleration. With a mental sigh, she stabbed her mental finger at the button. Titanic energies awoke, their awaking screaming out a drive signature that could be detected all over the planet's system and beyond.