Chapter 34
We had left the fort and were entering a large clearing in the jungle. There had been no problems and no alarms. There were nearly sixty of Kasm's clan with us, and other creatures stayed far away. Kasm assured me that even a night-stalker would hesitate to attack such a large group of his people. I hadn't been looking forward to a renewed acquaintance with the stench-beasts, and I was quite glad that we had such a large force.
I'd started to pass through the last vestiges of the smaller forest growth that lined the edge of the clearing when Kasm came crashing back to me and shoved his shoulder into my waist.
“Get back! Get back! There's a flying craft coming this way fast!” he sent.
We ducked under cover as we heard the engines of a shuttle-craft approaching. It was flying rapidly and heading directly towards the fort. I didn't know who was flying it or where it had come from, but it was either Frazzle or some Pugs that had shown up from somewhere.
We turned and headed back down the trail towards the fort. Some of the Sim-tigers sprinted on ahead and quickly disappeared along the trail. I set out at a pace that I knew I could hold for the several miles that we'd traveled. Frank, Erin, and Whistle dropped rapidly behind, and I signaled for Kasm to detail some of the clan to guard them.
It was a long run, but as I neared the fort, Kasm sent, “You can slow down now. The invaders landed next to the damaged shuttle and then incautiously came out to look around. They must have sensed the transporter's partial start-up and come to see what was going on. It was a big mistake for them to come out of their strong point. They're all dead now. The ones that ran ahead of us caught all of them and killed them. They had no chance to even get off a shot.”
I was greatly impressed. The Sim-tigers were much better fighters against the Pugs than were humans. They'd make great allies if I could get them back to Earth. I didn't know if there were any more of the invading aliens on Earth, but there certainly were some on Oberon. Once we cleared out that force, we could transport through to Estes Park and clear out any remaining invaders there. Then I'd have my hands full working out an alliance between the human race, the Sunnys, and the Sim-tigers. I had the notion that I could cobble together a coalition that could be aimed at the Pug-bears' occupied planets and somehow stop them permanently. It was just a passing thought at the moment, but I knew in the back of my mind that the Pug-bears would continue to be a problem as long as they had access to space travel. They had to be stopped somehow, even if it came to dropping KEWs on their planet until they were extinct. One larger rock accelerated to a sizable fraction of c would probably do for the Pug-bears' home planet and that of the Pugs, but I had yet to figure a way of getting the Pug-bears off of the Sunny planets without killing the Sunnys in the process. My comet attack had been moderately effective from the reports, but I had left before I knew how the revolution came out.
When I arrived at the fort, I immediately investigated the Pugs' shuttle. It was a vastly different model than the ones I'd seen previously. Those had been smaller ships, suitable for only a small number of passengers and capable of strafing or bombing runs. This one was a cargo carrier that was easily capable of holding a hundred or more Pugs or humans. If Whistle could fly this hulk, our problems would be solved. We could load the whole mess of us, Sim-tigers and all, and fly back to the station. Of course, there was the question of where these Pugs and their large shuttle had come from. If they had a shuttle of this size, it must have come in on a correspondingly large FTL and there were probably a lot of Pugs now running around on the orbital station.
There was no sense waiting around for them to come and check on what had happened, assuming that they had the capability. When the stragglers had arrived at the fort, the slowest of which was Whistle, I rushed him into the shuttle before he'd even had a chance to catch his wind.
He looked it over and said, “Dec, I never fly a craft like dis, but its mostly computer controlled. I can get us up.”
“What I want to know is where it came from,” I said.
“If I calls up to de station, it will alert dem that we're coming up and their crew is dead. Do you want me to call anyways?” he asked.
“No. We'll fly up and act as if we're their returning crew. If they call us on the communicator, we'll just pretend it's not working and hope they let us dock.” I was thinking hard, trying to improvise. If we could dock, I intended for the Sim-tigers to rapidly kill all of the Pugs on the station. I'd take a smaller group of them and attempt to take the FTL ship in which they must have arrived.
I outlined my thoughts to Kasm about what we needed to do and he explained to his people. I was worried about their response to their first shuttle flight, but it was a non-event. They proved to be far more adaptable than I'd anticipated. They took to space as if they were meant to be there.
As we approached the station, I could see that there was a huge FTL docked there. The ship was roughly twice as long as ours, and I assumed that it must be a second-generation vessel. The Sunnys always seemed to be intent on creating something better, even when they knew the end beneficiaries would be the Pug-bears. The ship was big enough that it would have no difficulty carrying the shuttle we'd captured. Judging from its size, it must have brought a very large crew to the station. That didn't bode well for our small force, even augmented as we were by the Sim-tigers.
As I'd hoped and partially expected, the Pugs made no effort to hail us, leaving the docking arrangements to be made by the station crew of Sunnys. The Pugs and Pug-bears were basically primitives in their thinking. They had no reason to suspect that any other forces would be traveling in space, and they acted as if their operations were totally secure. This was a weakness that I'd learned to expect, and I also wanted to keep in my mind as an object lesson. Never make assumptions that impact security. The unexpected can happen, and you can be caught unaware.
The Sunnys on the station called us, expecting to contact the Pug crew. When they found that we were in possession of the craft, they were shocked and amazed. They'd apparently given us up for dead.
Whistle had to do some fast talking, but he convinced them to conspire with us on our surprise docking. To give them credit, they weren't hard to convince. Their only reservation was they were worried about retribution should the Pugs dominate in the coming conflict. They were also, of course, unhappy about the incipient violence, but they'd reached a point of fear where their survival instincts had kicked in, making the thought of dead Pugs more bearable.
The large ship had arrived with only a skeleton crew, so that was a relief. They'd previously stopped at another system and dropped off their main complement of Pug fighters. The Sunnys there were not behaving very well and must have required some intimidation. There was a crew of only twenty Pugs and four Pug-bears that were left to come in on the big ship. It arrived piloted by only a couple of Sunnys. They'd started out the flight with more, but the Pug-bears had killed several of them for amusement.
They'd extended their voyage to this station to relieve the Pug watchers stationed there and check on the station and its status in general. It was fortunate for us that they did since it made it possible for us to capture their shuttle.
I had a foggy idea that I'd told Frazzle to go somewhere if the instruments detected another ship coming. Since our smaller ship wasn't docked or nearby, I hoped that was what he'd done. I didn't like to think about the possibility that the Pugs had captured him and our original vessel. When I mentioned this to Whistle, he assured me that he'd already asked the station Sunnys, and they'd indicated that Frazzle had left the instant they'd detected the traces of the big ship exiting from FTL status.
The station crew thought that there had been plenty of time for him to get away. He'd been traveling under EmDrive power, which was difficult to detect at a distance. That sounded good to me, but they hadn't heard from him since. The incoming ship had deviated from its direct path for an unknown reason and they were suspicious about that. I hoped that it didn't mean that he'd been intercepted.
They hastened to warn us about a new, second-generation Ansible system that didn't rely on the gravity of a planet. It could be used from a lighter-weight platform, such as a ship. We didn't want to risk trying to call Frazzle now. Even given the Pugs' lack of foresight, it would be too chancy. They might just have someone monitoring the FTL's new quantum comm system and pick up our call.
The short-range system we were using to communicate with the Sunny's docking coordinator was a simple radio system. Monitoring those bands wouldn't give enough warning to be useful. Anyone using them effectively was already within a few light minutes and could be on top of you quickly. On the other hand, the quantum system was essentially instantaneous. We'd destroyed the older model on Oberon before we left for that reason.
Following instructions from docking control, we gradually approached the station and moved into an intercept trajectory that would dock us on one of the two available arms. The large FTL had attached to the third arm. It threw the station's rotation out of balance, but the Sunny crew were compensating by using the FTL's EmDrive engines and maneuvering thrusters. It was wasteful, but apparently the Pugs didn't care. It didn't put them out in any way; the Sunnys would just have to make adjustments.
We approached slowly, Whistle working at a high rate of speed at the board. Matching up with the station's spin and having to compensate for the perturbations due to the sporadic adjustments made by the massive FTL was difficult. There was a lot of chatter back and forth between Whistle and the coordinator, but we ended up gliding into contact with no more than a slight shudder and a clash of metal as the docking clamps engaged.
Kasm's forces instantly unstrapped and were ready for action. It made me appreciate how nice it must be to have enough natural weapons and not to have to load up with guns and reloads. The second the hatch had equalized and I swung it open, Kasm brushed by me, followed by a long stream of his compatriots. The two Sunnys who had been on the other side of the port whistled cries of alarm. Whistle popped his head through the hatch under my arm and let out a series of clicks and whistling noises at which they quieted. They'd been pushed against the wall by the Sim-tigers' rush, and they held totally still, immobile in the grip of near panic, despite Whistle's reassurances.
Frank and I were loaded and ready to go, also. We followed the last of the cat-like creatures down the arm to the hub of the station. They'd been moving so fast that there was nothing there save a few savaged Pug carcasses and one overturned Pug-bear. The latter was still moving its legs feebly in reflex actions. Without getting too close, giving due respect to the toxic nature of its claws, I looked at the bottom of its carapace. There was a series of deep gouges there that cut right through the natural armor at its thinnest point. Despite the flow of its blood, you could see that a thick cable-like nerve plexus had been severed. I pointed it out to Frank, who studied it carefully.
“If I could turn one of these things over, my sword would do as good a job on the bottom,” he observed.
“Yeah. But that's the problem. How do you get close enough to them to turn them over without being struck?” I responded.
“I dunno, but it's good to know that they've got a weakness somewhere,” he answered, turning his back and walking toward the nearest hallway.
It led to the docked FTL and we could hear the sounds of conflict coming from the opening. It was mostly caused by the Sim-tigers growling, but as we approached, I could hear the hissing speech of the Pugs. They'd holed up behind some piled-up boxes and were standing off Kasm's group with anti-matter pistols.
This seemed to me to be a highly undesirable strategy. It was more than likely that they'd eventually shoot a bolt that would hole the station. We didn't have suits and weren't prepared for vacuum fighting. When we reached a point that gave us a view of the situation, I could see that Kasm's force was crouching in the lee of an open pressure door. The edges of the door showed eroded spots where they'd been struck lightly by the anti-matter beams. Luckily, the Pugs only had a few of the handguns and weren't shooting very much. The small weapons only carried enough charge for a very few, low-power shots, and the Pugs were trying to make their limited ammunition count.
Whenever a Sim-tiger would expose himself, a Pug would try to shoot him. The result was a sporadic barrage of anti-matter beams that flew down the hall, hissing lightly as they reacted with the molecules in the air until they attenuated and disappeared. We stopped at a slight curve in the hallway and peered around the corner carefully. Judging that I could hit the Pugs' cover with my rifle without doing irreparable damage to the station wall behind their position, I triggered off a very brief burst. The boxes crackled and disappeared, along with pieces of the defending force where they were unlucky enough to be struck.
As soon as I'd shot and the damage was done, Kasm and company hurled themselves through the gap in the boxes. There was a lot of ruckus, and a couple of Pugs jumped up and tried to run but were quickly brought down by the tigers, who simply and efficiently crushed their necks or skulls with a single bite. It was over in short order.
Since I'd only seen one Pug-bear, I sent an inquiring thought to Kasm, and he responded, “That's the only one of them we've seen. The others must be in their ship.”
I was about to ask about the other arm of the station when a small group of Sim-tigers brushed past us from behind. They'd gone exploring down the other arm but had found nothing but a couple of frightened Sunnys who were coming up to the control center in the hub. The Pug force was localized near their vessel, and we'd killed all of them we could reach.
As I was taking stock of the situation, the lights by the airlock between us and the FTL flashed yellow, and there was a wrenching clash of tortured metal. The FTL had pulled away without even bothering to undock from the clamps. This was very bad. There were enough aliens left on the ship to force the Sunny crew to take off. I'd hoped to capture the huge craft, but now, although it was unarmed, it was free to leave the system and also to call for reinforcements.
I turned to Whistle, who'd just arrived. His smaller legs couldn't carry him as fast as we moved and he was always late to the party, although I thought that he was also being very careful not to get in the way when his violent friends were fighting. “Whistle, quick! Go and call Frazzle. See if you can reach him and get him to come pick us up. We might have a chance if he can get here before that ship goes into FTL. If we can catch up to her, we can either capture her or shoot her lights out.”
He turned dutifully and ran back the way he'd come. Kasm and I followed while Frank stayed behind, checking on the dead Pugs just to make sure they really were dead.
As we ran, Kasm told me that the Pugs had managed to kill several of his people due to the constricted nature of the fight. “I don't want to fight where we can't use our natural advantages again,” he sent with an overtone of anger in his aura.
“We'll have to ensure that you aren't faced with this type of situation in the future. If we can fight on the surface of a planet, your people can use their natural speed and camouflage. There is one potential battle that we may have to engage in where we'll be limited to this type of environment, and that's a base on one of the small moons in our system. There is little atmosphere, and it's deadly cold, so all life is restricted to a series of domes,” I responded. Speaking to him was almost becoming like thinking to myself. We'd gotten close, and I wasn't observing some of the amenities with him any longer.
“You'd better see if we can just blow the domes up! I really don't like losing my friends,” was his measured reply.
I agreed, but the potential presence of Sunnys in the domes was a problem. Perhaps we'd be able to get them isolated somehow before we attacked.
We arrived back at the command center for the station and I asked Whistle to try and contact Frazzle on the Ansible. A short time later, we were in contact. Frazzle had taken the ship sun-ward and moved into the shadow of the next planet towards the sun.
It was a small ball of rock, baked by the intense rays of the blue sun. He'd set up an orbit that kept him mostly in the cone of shadow cast by the planet. This kept the sun's rays from overheating the FTL and also made it difficult for the ship to be picked out by any sensors since the mass of the planet behind it provided enough noise to cover the relatively small signal from the ship.
I was still in awe over the long-range comm system. It was far better than radio since there was no lag in our conversation. I instructed Frazzle to start heading our way. Using the EmDrive's maximum acceleration, he could be close enough to our location for the transporter system to work reliably in a little over an hour. Now, it was a race to see if he'd pick us up with enough time left to pursue the Pug-bears' large ship before it reached light speed and became unavailable.