Chapter 351

The Planetoid – Selina and Diana's Mission

As soon as Diana closed the hatch behind her, she felt the tug of gentle acceleration as Selina began their ascent out of the crevasse.

"I suited up while you were placing the device. You can leave the helmet cracked, but keep your suit on for now. Hurry back up here and assist me with our ascent," Selina ordered over the intercom.

She desperately needed to pee, but because of the urgency in Selina's voice, Diana decided to let the suit take care of that. After cycling through the lock, she returned to the bridge.

"Why the suits?" Diana asked as she slid into her seat.

"I ... suppose..."

" ... That the enemy will certainly be looking more earnestly for intruders after the device initiates," Diana supplied.

"Precisely," Selina responded, then went on with, "I am maintaining our light emissions at a minimum. Please assist me in watching for protrusions on the walls as well as other obstacles as I work my way out of the crevasse," Selina instructed.

"Commander, considering our present circumstances, I am better equipped to navigate our way out of the crevasse," the AI insisted.

Selina mumbled something, but after a moment, let out a strained, "Affirmative, AI."

"Assuming control," it instantly responded, and even as it spoke, the two women felt the acceleration as the little ship increased speed.

The jumbled mass of rocks and dramatically uneven walls blurred past. Both women sat tense as they saw the narrowing ahead, but the AI did not slow the ship, blasting through the opening with only scant feet on either side.

"Shit," Diana hissed with an intake of breath, then added, "Show-off," but by the time she had said it, they were already well clear of the narrowing and moving still faster toward the surface of the planetoid.

"Slow as you near the surface," Selina ordered, then a few moments later, "I will assume control again." Barely moving, although both wanted to shift to the inertialess drive and leave at high speed, the tiny ship nosed its way barely clear of the crevasse. After coming to a stop relative to the planetoid, they waited while their instruments and the AI assimilated data.

"We penetrated their pickets and patrols on the way in; we can repeat the process on the way out," Selina tried to say with assurance in her voice.

As they continued to observe the patrols, waiting for the opportune moment, "Uh, Commander, I might remind you what the scientists told us about the device..."

"I am aware, Second," Selina snapped, the strain of the past days showing in her voice. "It is experimental, and is a prototype. They assume its effect will last from a few microseconds to ten seconds, maximum. However, since its effect is theoretical at this point, and..."

" ... they just told us to be at least a hundred miles away when it functioned," Diana finished for her. "And one of them took me aside and quietly told me that he thought his associates were underestimating the device's capabilities, and suggested that we 'run like hell' when we set the timer, and to keep running."

Selina barely acknowledged Diana's comment as she concentrated on her inputs. "There," Selina said as she pointed to her forward screen. "There is a wider gap in the near patrols that will be passing over us in..."

"Thirty-two seconds," the AI supplied.

" ... thirty two seconds. If we time our course properly, we can slip through at the opportune moment. Then we shall retrace our route a hundred miles out and begin our return voyage out of the system."

"Respectfully, Commander, I think I have a better plan," Diana quietly said.

Selina turned to stare at her Second. "But that has been the plan from the beginning. AI has kept our inbound route in memory and we shall reverse that to work our way out of the system."

But Diana was shaking her head. "I keep remembering what that scientist said. Commander – respectfully – I think that slow route out will get us killed. We need to work our way around to the route the fleet took coming in and start out of the system, then just before the time for the device is to initiate, head down the middle of that cleared path at our highest possible speed."

"And if the route is mined, or there are patrols?"

"Then we warp out as soon as we can find an area clear of debris that is big enough to do so, and get the hell out of this system."

Even as they debated, the opening in the lower patrols presented itself and they began their stealthy departure from the planetoid, but Diana's little diatribe must have had an effect, or else Selina was more conscious of what was behind them, for she hastened their departure as much as she dared.

As she began to retrace her course to partially circle the planetoid along the safe route they had mapped on the way in, she was aware of increasing tension from her partner.

"My way is safer, Second..."

"And we are soon to be dead," Diana responded, not quite arguing with her commander. There was a hesitation, then, "I have a gut feeling, Commander. Please listen to me. I believe that scientist. The others were too proud of themselves and their achievement to be objective. He was certain they were vastly underestimating the result and the subsequent danger to us."

"But..."

Diana decided to try one more time, and went hastily on, "Granted we need to be cautious, but if we work our way around to the path the fleet used coming in, we can still remain just inside the debris field as near as we dare to the cleared path. That way, we will be farther away when the device initiates, and if we're detected, we can move into the clear and leave at our maximum velocity. Our ship is small and does not need as much open space to be able to warp out, therefore, we should be able to find an opening somewhere along the path before they can bring their patrol craft into firing range." Diana reached over to put a gloved hand on Selina's. "You repeatedly said we were a team. I feel strongly about this, Commander."

Selina again turned to stare at her partner, then with a sigh, "Very well. We shall initiate your plan, but I remind you that Command wants us to leave unnoticed. The less the enemy knows about what happened when this is over, the better. If we are not discovered, they might very well think it was just some type of accident, and ... we certainly do not want any of this technology, or even a hint of it, to fall into enemy hands."

As they made their way around the planetoid, they watched the giant ship as the base disgorged a seemingly endless stream of munitions and supplies toward the monster.

"How long do you suppose this," Diana asked, motioning toward the screens, "will take?"

Selina sat thinking for a second. "If it is, indeed, their initial loadout, I would say at least two weeks, if ... everything goes to plan."

"But with something that size, I'll bet there has already been a screw-up or two," Diana added with a grin. "And with the frigates and corvettes, not to mention the twenty destroyers..."

"In addition to numerous tenders," Selina added.

" ... there are bound to be mishaps. Too bad I can't get at their base computer for a few minutes, I could add to the chaos," she finished with a grin. "Of course, if the device does what the scientists say it will, there are going to be some unhappy enemy commanders."

"And ... some highly aggravated ones, should they realize that we are the cause of their problems," Selina said, bringing them back to reality.

"Yeah, there is that." Then looking at her readouts, "Two hours." It wasn't necessary to define what Diana meant.

Finally, at the fringe of the open path, Selina turned the controls over to the AI. "In addition to pickets, be aware that there is a higher chance of smart mines along this route," Selina warned the artificial intelligence.

"Affirmative, Commander."

Had it not been for the suits they were wearing, Diana would have been biting her nails. Finally, Selina turned to her Second, "We have an hour left before the device initiates. Remember that the scientists said we would have a better chance of destroying the base if we anchored the device on bedrock. That implies that they were not certain it would destroy the base if it were otherwise deployed. We were more than a hundred miles away when we began to parallel the cleared path. That distance, in itself, should give us an ample safety margin, and with the time left before initiation, we will be several thousand miles away. Why do you continue to worry about the device?"

Diana hesitated, but then spoke her feelings. "Because, if we don't quit dawdling around, we're going to be dead." Before Selina could object, Diana went hastily on. "Our stealth has proven itself. I think we should plant ourselves in the middle of the cleared path, and leave at maximum speed under inertialess drive."

"And the smart mines?" Selina said, raising her voice.

"They shouldn't detect us, and if one does, it will still take awhile for it to catch up to us. Remember, the enemy does not have our inertialess drive technology."

"But we know they do have inertial dampers on their ships. We don't have enough information about their mines to know whether they have dampers or not, but the dampers would be of lesser value on an entirely mechanical device. Only flesh and blood has to be protected from the stresses of high acceleration."

"True, but delicate circuitry will fail under heavy enough acceleration, and if the mines do not have dampers, we might be able to outrun one. If not, we can certainly outmaneuver anything that does not have an inertialess drive," Diana insisted. "Besides, I'm still not sure their mines can even detect us while we're running under full stealth."

Selina thought for a moment. "We shall continue with my more conservative approach for a time. We will not give away our presence if at all possible. And might I remind you that is also part of our directive."

"Yes, Commander," Diana responded, but the frown never left her face.

She's wrong, Diana thought. I know she's wrong. I believe that scientist. He was very, very sincere when he told me to get the hell just as far away as I could before the device initiated. And he wasn't talking about a few miles.

As soon as they left the planetoid, they had begun leaving micro pickets along their route, both as a defensive measure to alert them should they be pursued, and also to record what happened at the base when the device initiated. For now, the pickets lay dormant, other than recording. Seconds before the device initiated, the pickets would begin transmitting their data along a supposedly secure and stealthed frequency, and the scout would pick up the data and record it for Command and the scientists to review. After a preset time, the pickets would then self-destruct.

Time drifted on as they made their way through the outskirts of the debris field nearest the clear channel while heading away from the planetoid. "So far, the enemy appears not to have mined the channel," Selina commented as she began to relax.

The Prison Planet

... He didn't see the wolf, but what he did see brought goose bumps to his sweaty back. Two hundred yards away, with giant loping bounds quickly eating up the distance, the saber-tooth was coming.

For a couple of seconds, Morales' mind froze, then with a start, he glanced over his shoulder. The nearest tree tall enough that could allow him to maybe get high enough to be out of the cat's reach was a hundred and fifty yards away and didn't have a single limb lower than twenty feet. Besides, he thought, the cat would be on me long before I could even get to the tree, let alone climb it, and ... I don't know if the cat can climb a tree or not. With a mental sigh, he turned to face his Waterloo.

With a big bore rifle, I could probably stop the thing before it gets close enough to kill me, but with a crossbow... Almost giddy, he fought back a giggle as something in the back of his mind kept screaming at him to run, but logic kept telling him that running would be useless.

"Well," he said aloud as he brought the crossbow up, "they did send me here for life. But I expected it to be a bit longer than this."