Confederation -- 29

Chapter 29

We were headed for the second Sunny planet to dump yeast on the Pug-bears. Despite the heavy in-system traffic, the exercise had gone well on the first planet. Our shuttles had managed to spread their payloads evenly across the sole continent.

Ian was nearly beside himself with excitement. He'd seen just enough of the first planet's ecology with the monitor's macro function to convince him that he couldn't wait for a chance to study the indigenous life forms. He was quite angry about me insisting that we continue on to the next planet.

"Damn it, Dec! How are we going to know if the yeast works unless we land and investigate? Jaunting off to another solar system is just a waste of time if the stuff doesn't do its job. Also, it might have some kind of bad effect on the planetary ecology. How am I going to know if we're doing the right thing?" he argued, nearly in tears from frustration.

I answered, "It will be enough if the yeast suppresses the Pug-bears' symbionts. The local ecosystems will have to take their chances –"

He interrupted my following sentence. "No! We could be doing irreparable damage –"

One interruption deserves another, so I continued, in a louder voice, drowning him out, "The local ecosystems are already being damaged irrevocably by the Pug-bears. The adults kill large animals indiscriminately, and the spider-form plays hell with small creatures. Allowing them to breed unchecked will do more damage than any amount of yeast."

I wasn't sure about that. The yeast could overwhelm the planet's life. I had nightmares of returning and finding that I'd converted the entire place to a planet-sized petri-dish full of fungus gone amok.

He shook his head in denial and responded with precisely that fear, "The yeast might do more damage than the aliens."

"Look, Ian, the Sunnys are aliens on these planets. They arrived on them years before the Pug-bears invaded. They are also technologically savvy. They can deal with whatever problems the yeast causes. They can't deal with the Pug-bears, so getting rid of them is our number one priority. You, yourself, swore to me that the yeast would suppress their symbionts, so we have to follow through with our plan. Every day that goes by sees more Sunny deaths caused by the Pug-bears. The Sunnys are not affected by the yeast, so I don't think the ecosystems will be affected either. The stuff doesn't attack the Pug-bears' physiology; it just chokes the symbionts out," I replied.

He thought about it for a moment, "Well, there is that, I guess. I'm fairly confident that most of our micro-organisms wouldn't be able to attack an alien life-form. They evolved to take advantage of Earth's ecological niches. But what happens if a local niche isn't available?"

"The only local niche I want the yeast to invade is the Pug-bears' brain-cases," I responded. "I don't care if it starves otherwise as long as it gets rid of their intelligence. If it does that, the Sunnys will have a fighting chance."

He latched onto my last statement as a weakness in my argument. "I thought you said they couldn't fight? How will they get rid of the Pug-bears, intelligent or not?"

"Frazzle provided them with plans for several kinds of traps. The Sunnys can build those, and the unintelligent Pug-bears will gradually fall prey to them. If necessary, we can help out later, but we've got to get the process started on all five planets to give them a chance. We've got to solve the problem posed by the Pug-bears, and the sooner, the better," I replied.

Liz had been listening to our discussion quietly, but now she chimed in, "That's true! There are still several FTL ships unaccounted for, and we don't want a ship full of Pug-bears showing up in our system planning on invading us again. They breed too quickly. We can't afford to give them another chance."

I added, "That's right. We've got to get them off all planets but their own and make sure they never get another chance to reach space."

I looked at him to see if he understood our urgency, then continued, "Besides, you'll have plenty of chances to study alien ecology. You can ride down on the next yeast-bombing run, and that will at least allow you to see two planets. Then later, when we come back to finish the job, you'll have a chance to visit the surfaces of all of the Sunny planets."

I was thinking of the surface of Kasm's planet and wondering if he'd want to study that as well. The odd beasts would provide subjects for years of study. It would be an irresistible attraction for any biologist despite the considerable danger the animal life posed.

During the next phase of our voyage, we allowed the yeast to divide and grow in our storage tanks. By the time we arrived near the next planetary system, the tiny fungi had replicated themselves so that we had more than we'd had when we left Earth.

Several days later, we arrived in the second Sunny system. Like the last system, this one was like nothing I'd visited in the past. The star was a young one, and the system, like the last, was full of dirt, dust, and rocks of all sizes but only had one single, massive planet. The planet was a gas giant that I judged was near twice the size of Jupiter.

It wasn't quite a second star, but it was close. There was a lot of radiation coming from it, and it almost certainly had some degree of fusion going on down below the miles and miles of dense gas that served as its atmosphere.

The Sunnys had colonized the largest of its moons. The moon was big enough to be viewed as a planet in its own right and had its own atmosphere. It was slightly larger than Earth in diameter, but its mass was less since it was composed of lighter materials.

There were numerous other moons, ranging from objects the size of Titan down to small rocks that orbited in a complicated dance around the giant planet. Their orbits intersected, which must have resulted in collisions in the recent past. The big moon's surface revealed several large scars and numerous craters, indicating that it was still subject to bombardment. I briefly wondered how the Sunnys expected to avoid being hit by the falling rocks and why they'd picked this location to colonize.

As our ships approached the star, I saw their answer to the meteors. It was an engineering feat that made me gasp. Twenty orbital stations traveled around the moon in crossing orbital paths but at slightly different altitudes. The Sunnys had set up an immense orbital deflection field.

They'd used the same system that protected their spaceships, meaning that the field was a derivative of their artificial gravity. This system provided gravity within the ships and could be used to repel external objects to protect the ships from being struck by high-velocity dust or micro-meteors. I now saw that it was even more flexible than I'd realized. It could be used across the entire surface of a planet, providing an effective shield against the young stellar system's debris.

Each of the orbiting stations contributed to the shield. Frazzle explained to me that it wasn't a single shield. Each station created its own shield, extending it as far as possible. The large number of the orbiting fields provided a moving web of deflection that pushed most of the junk away from courses that would directly impact the surface. Large objects that would have overwhelmed the station fields were dealt with individually, but they were, fortunately, few in number.

The lowest orbital station was the one that hosted calling ships. It was safely below the interlacing fields and was unlikely to be struck by objects. It currently hosted four large FTL ships. The Pug-bears and Pugs were here in force.

On seeing this, Frazzle commented that there were only two more unaccounted for FTL ships to the best of his knowledge. We'd destroyed some and captured others. The Pug-bears' Sunny-provided FTL-capable fleet had never been extensive. They had previously used colony ships to invade the planets under their control. The FTL ships were a new development.

This was an excellent opportunity for us. If we could capture or destroy these four ships, it would go a long way towards clearing the Pug-bears out of space. If we could get these ships and if we chanced on the other enemy FTLs at another planet, I could begin to see an end to this chasing around, trying to destroy the Pug-bears' empire.

We approached the moon over the next few hours, giving Frazzle time to use the comm system and contact the Sunny traffic control. Once again, this worked well. These Sunnys, like all of the others, were more than willing to keep the knowledge of our presence from their masters.

Our approach was far from smooth. The dirty system interposed navigational hazards that we had to avoid. Every so often, we had to change our course slightly to avoid a cluster of asteroids, and there was an almost constant flare around the bows of our ships caused by small rocks and dust striking the deflection shields. Once or twice, a distant clang was paired with a slight shock to the ship as larger stones made it through and struck the bow shield itself. I was apprehensive that one of those strikes would knock our bow cannon out.

That cannon was mounted on the exact tip of the bow shield, so it was a good target for rocks. Its power supply relied on an armored cable that led across the shield's surface to where it attached to the ship's power at the rear of the shield. This cable was an additional weak point. The cannon itself was heavy and durable enough to withstand minor strikes, but the cable could be easily severed if even a smaller rock happened to strike it. The gun would still fire on battery power if that happened, but the number of shots was strictly limited.

I reflected on the desirability of capturing the ships versus simply shooting them. Shooting them would probably be easier, but I wanted them to add to my growing fleet. I could

see the need to provide transportation to the Sim-tigers and the Sunnys, at least until the Sunnys had the opportunity to create more ships of their own.

We began to prepare for what would surely be a battle.