Chapter 35
We didn't make it. The Pug-bears' ship exited the system, and the station crew detected the faint but unmistakable signature of its entrance into FTL status shortly before Frazzle got near enough for us to transport aboard. I was exasperated! Now, what were we to do? There was a distinct possibility that the large FTL would return within a few weeks fully loaded with Pug fighters. I doubted that they'd attempt to land on the planet, but they would surely re-take the station. Frazzle and Whistle agreed with me and Whistle wasted no time in convincing the five remaining station crew members to come with us.
This group consisted of a mated couple and three single females. The females all had brindled coats. They ranged from a dark gray background to a tawny, almost reddish field over which a series of blotches and spots were scattered. I'd learned that all Sunny females had multicolored coats while the males were uniformly a single color with possibly an accent color across their stomach or face. It made the sexes relatively easy to differentiate. I certainly couldn't tell any difference physically, save the females were slightly more robust. The couple were older, and two of the females were their daughters. The other, reddish-coated one was unrelated.
I sent Whistle and a couple of the Sim-tigers to launch the large shuttle-craft that we'd captured on the planet's surface. It was a really convenient size for larger groups, whether they were men or aliens, and I didn't want to leave it behind. Whistle was to head for the FTL and match up with it, docking on the second set of grapples. The FTL was set up to carry two rider-crafts. Now, if only the grapple arms and claws were standard and would hold the new shuttle. Whistle thought it would work, but he wasn't sure.
As soon as Frazzle had our ship within a reasonable distance for transporting, one that ensured that we'd introduce no errors into our transcribed selves, we began to stage through. The transporter on the ship could hold a maximum of four of us, and that delayed things considerably since we had over sixty individuals to move. The ship continued in our direction, and we all eventually got on board. Whistle and the other shuttle arrived about an hour after we got the Sim-tigers settled into cabins.
When they arrived, we got good news. The larger shuttle had the same docking system as our smaller one, and there was no problem attaching it to the big ship. When asked, Frazzle told me that the FTL had more than enough power to transport the additional mass. That was a real blessing, as now we had both smaller ships and that nicely increased our transportation capability.
The Sim-tigers weren't much of a problem. Blood-related groups preferred to sleep together, a fact which ended up allowing us to fit several into a single cabin. The ship was almost large enough to accommodate everyone. Erin offered to give up her cabin and bunk with me, but I forestalled her by rooming with Frank. She was disappointed and made no effort to hide it, even going so far as to try and bribe Frank to trade with her. Fortunately, he calmly said he was happy where he was, and that was the end of it.
Frazzle turned the ship outward towards the edge of the system's disk. There was no sense in hanging around near the station. We moved out on EmDrive power without accelerating too rapidly. After everyone had gotten settled and briefed on the facilities, I called a meeting with Kasm and a couple of others from his group, Frazzle, Whistle, and Erin. Frank expressed no interest, saying, “Just point me at a fight and tell me who to kill, and I'm fine with that. I don't want to be involved in strategy. I trust that you'll make the right decisions.”
We met on the command deck and hashed out the possibilities for our next move. I initially suggested that we return to the Sunny system that we'd dropped the ice bomb on in order to see how they were making out with their revolt against the Pug-bears. Frazzle and Whistle were in favor of this, but Kasm pointed out that we were not ready to attack on a planetary scale.
He was correct, and his blunt statement that there were too few of us made me realize that there was little we could do for the Sunny revolution. Aside from dropping some additional KEWs on the widely dispersed enemy, there was no additional action that was feasible for us. It's one thing to engage in small groups and quite another to take planetary-scale action. We needed to focus on those choke points in the enemies' organization that would allow us to make maximum use of our small force.
We ended up determining that our best action would be to head back to Earth and stop the second wave of the invasion there before the Pug-bears built up a large force on the planet. Then we'd try and recruit human fighters to help free the Sunnys. We still needed more ships, but since we had the only armed FTL in space, I thought that we'd probably be able to capture others that we encountered. With that in mind, we set out to return to Earth on the most direct route.
We'd arrived at the Sim-tigers' planet by traveling along two legs of a triangle. Rather than retrace our journey exactly, it was far shorter for us to return along the third leg, but Frazzle informed me that it was still going to take about three weeks. There was a large and thick dust cloud that blocked the direct path and we'd have to circumnavigate that. Passing through that much dust in an FTL state would be risky. The FTL system was rather delicately balanced, and the presence of so much external mass might interfere with our wave-form. I didn't understand his whole explanation, but I was happy to agree that we needed to avoid the risk. He laid in the course and accelerated and in a fairly short time, we entered into the FTL state.
Keeping the Sim-tigers amused proved to be my primary concern. They didn't intend to be difficult, but they were used to traveling daily and covering a lot of ground in their wandering life on Tukoli. After a couple of days of listening to Kasm complain about being bored, I resorted to asking Frank to demonstrate sword-play to them. This was a great hit and resulted in requests for swords. The ship did have some bar-stock in the mechanical shop and Whistle was able to fashion some crude swords that they could practice with. We made every effort to ensure that no injuries occurred, but there were a few bruised heads and arms from the exercise. I'd been foresightful enough to have the blades wrapped with a kind of rubber-like material that was available in a rope form and that provided enough cushion that clumsy strikes were mostly blunted.
After some days of practice, the Sim-tigers started to develop their own style of fighting. It shortly became far more deadly than I'd foreseen. The extra weapon, paired with claws and teeth, greatly increased their options for strikes. They were mostly disdainful of our handguns, but the swords really seemed to fill a perceived need in their minds. We put together a crude model of a Pug-bear, and they made good use of it. The primary problem was that we had to repair the thing almost constantly. They'd run past at full speed and slash at the legs as they went by. Inevitably, the legs would break or be knocked askew by the force of the blow, and the model would topple over. Then, the Sim-tiger would dash around to an advantageous position and strike at the nerve plexus with either the sword or a convenient paw full of extended and razor-sharp claws. The way they were going, I almost hated to turn them loose on the Pug-bears; that is, if I hadn't hated the nasty things so much.
At the same time, I took it upon myself to teach classes in map reading, orientation, and sit-rep techniques. It had never occurred to the Sim-tigers that it might be a good thing to have a standardized reporting technique, and the idea caused a lot of discussion among them. I was still unable to communicate with any of them, having to impose on Kasm's goodwill as a translator. I was relieved when he stated that he was learning as he translated and didn't mind the work.
Erin had been a veterinarian and briefed small groups on the anatomy of earthly animals, including humans. I was able to get Whistle to discuss what the Sunnys knew of both the Pugs and Pug-bears, and that proved popular since The People fully believed in the concept of knowing your enemy. I reasoned that it couldn't hurt to have educated my forces. They were certainly capable of killing any earth life if they could defeat the Pug-bears in combat. Having them understand just how vulnerable the locals were might keep them from inadvertently injuring people who were on our side. At least, that was my hope.
I did my best to avoid being alone with Erin. I think she got the idea that I was avoiding her; on more than one occasion, I caught her giving me a speculative, hurt look. I didn't want to mislead her. We were on our way back to Earth, and even though I couldn't remember much about my wife, I did know that I was married and didn't need the complication of a relationship with the fiery redhead.
I found that I had enough time to spend hours in my cabin, alone, meditating and concentrating on rebuilding my damaged memories. The fog was mostly gone now. I could clearly remember everything that had happened since the vision-beast had injured me. By concentrating, I could remember much of what had gone before. In fact, I felt that I was nearly back to normal functionality, with the exception that my memories of my wife and child were very fuzzy.
I was meditating on this issue during the early part of a sleep period when it hit me! Kasm had indicated that the vision-beast would take the most desired memory and amplify it back to its victim. He'd been thinking about his deceased mate when he was snared. I'd been doing the same thing in some way. I remembered suddenly that the vision-beast had shown me a view of – Liz! I could remember her name! Apparently, the damage done by the creature in its death throes was focused on that entry point it had used to gain control over me in the first place. It was no wonder that I was having problems with my memories of her. I felt that I'd made a major step. Maybe I couldn't remember what she looked like, but I remembered her name! I was quite pleased with this progress.
The next day, over breakfast, I could still remember it. Erin came into the cafeteria area, selected some food from one of the machines, and sat beside me. Rather unthinkingly, I began to explain to her my struggles to remember. When I got to the point of remembering my marriage to Liz, I glanced up from my plate to see a stricken expression pass over her face.
“Erin! I didn't mean – ” I started, but she interrupted me.
“That's OK. I know that you've been suffering from your memory problem. I just hoped – I mean, I just wanted to be helpful. I'm glad you can remember something!” She abruptly stood and carried her tray over to the disposal chute, then walked rapidly out of the room.
I watched as she left. She was trying to act nonchalantly, but I could tell that my partial recovery had hit her hard. She looked like she was hurrying to get out of my sight before she broke down in tears. I felt like a complete jerk over the situation. Thinking about it, though, I felt somewhat angry. Why did this have to happen to me? I really hadn't tried to attract her, and I wanted the best for her. I knew that I found her desirable, but my conscience wouldn't let me follow up on that as long as there was a chance that I could be reunited with Liz. With our impending approach to Sol, that began to seem more and more likely. I sighed and then left for the bridge.
About midway through the voyage, Frazzle came to me in the cafeteria, “Dec, how do humans mate?”
That set me back a bit. I thought that he'd been to one of Erin's classes, but I was fairly sure that she wasn't covering such things. I considered and then decided that I'd better get some clarification about what he was getting at. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Are you speaking of the physical action?”
“Oh! No! Dat's not it! I mean, Sunnys have a big celebration of all the group when a couple decide to bond and we don't have enough of us to have a proper party on the ship.” He seemed to be a little embarrassed. “Also, a family member gots to give the boy to the girl. I don't have no family on the ship.”
It suddenly came through to me. I'd noticed that the single Sunny girl had been spending a lot of time hanging around the control deck when Frazzle was there. He wanted to get married!
I asked carefully, “Could a friend, even if that friend was a different species, act as a family member in such a case?”
His eyes sparkled, “Dat would be wonderful! Dec, would you do that for me?”
“Of course, I would! I'd be greatly honored to give you to her, and as for the party, I'm sure we can invite the whole ship. Everyone's in need of entertainment, and even the Sim-tigers would probably be glad to attend.” Just as I said that, Kasm and one of his compatriots entered the room. They were apparently arguing a fine point of swordplay, but Kasm immediately turned his attention to me, having overheard my last statement.
“Attend what, Dec?” he sent.
I hadn't actually sent that out directly to him in the manner I used when we communicated, nevertheless, he'd somehow overheard my thoughts, or ... another option occurred to me, he could understand English.
He overheard that thought and sent back, “Not well, but I'm learning. It helps that you both think the words and speak them. I'm able to glean the meaning, and the sounds are starting to make sense to me. Now, what would we be interested in attending?”
I explained, and I could sense that he was amused and pleased at the same time. He walked over to Frazzle and looked him over carefully, much to Frazzle's consternation. Then he turned his head to me and sent, “Tell him that we'd all be pleased to attend his bonding party. We do something similar, and I want to be the first to wish him a long and fruitful life with many children.”
The party was held in the loading dock since that was the largest space on the ship. It went well, and although I was nervous about it, I seemed to do well in my official role. The other Sunnys showed their approbation by whistling and stamping their feet, and the entire group of Kasm's people made the deck shudder with a collective roar after the ceremony was complete. Erin and Frank both congratulated Frazzle and Mrs. Frazzle – we hadn't settled on a human name for her as yet, but we were leaning towards “Red” simply due to her predominant color.
As the group broke up and went back to their normal hang-outs, I noticed that Whistle was leaving with both of the other two single females. He had an arm around each, and they were whistling, and I would have sworn, giggling, if they made such a noise. I wondered if he'd be getting married next or if he was still playing the field, small though it was. I noticed Erin grinning at their backs as they left. She came over to me with a smile and said, “I've always liked weddings. Never been married myself, though. I guess I just never found a man I could respect.” She paused, looked at them and then glanced rather coyly at me and added quietly, “Until now.”
I put my arm around her and gave her a weak hug, then disengaged and headed back to my cabin. I was flattered and confused by her attention. I had a wife, I kept telling myself that, despite my foggy memory. I thought that I'd been very happy with my family. I just wished I'd regain both my memory and my psychic abilities. The incident put a nasty crimp in my mood. I'd been happy for Frazzle, but I spent the sleep period in a kind of restless half-sleep, worrying about my mind, my marriage, and what I was going to do about Erin's obvious attraction to me.
Frazzle was back in the control room the next day with Red. She hung over the back of his seat and they seemed to be always touching. It was almost silly, they acted like two kids with their first crush. We gradually got back to our normal activity pattern, although Whistle seemed to be hiding out somewhere most of the time. I thought that he was spending time with each of the two other available females alternately, but I didn't actually check up on it.
In such a fashion, we whiled away the days until we exited from FTL far from the sun in the vicinity of the Oort cloud. Frazzle didn't want to exit too close to Uranus and he felt the debris in the cloud would provide some shielding against possible detection. We proceeded towards Oberon under EmDrive and arrived there after several hours of travel. Once again, we approached from behind the planet. The Pug-bears weren't overly watchful, but there was no sense in directly challenging them, either.
We took up an orbital path that would allow us to slowly move to the side of the planet occupied by Oberon. We were nearer Uranus' surface than Oberon's orbit and our ship would be masked from any of the moon base's quantum sensors against the noise of the planet. We'd be easily visible to telescopic observation, but there was little likelihood of that. The invaders weren't interested in enhancing their scientific knowledge by observing the planet. The Sunnys might be, but they were mostly too intimidated by their en-slavers to volunteer any information to the Pug-bears. We were gambling and hoped they'd try hailing us first if they actually noticed that we were catching up to the moon's position.
As soon as we had a good view of the moon, we could see that it was now covered with far more domes than before. Many more of the aliens had evidently arrived since our departure. They hadn't wasted time while we were gone. In addition to the numerous new domes, there was an FTL vessel trailing the moon in its orbit around Uranus. When we detected this new ship, my plans changed rapidly. I suddenly wanted to capture it in the worst possible way.
The single ship I commanded was nice, but in order to carry the attack to the Pug-bears, we'd need additional vessels. I had been intending to attack the domes, freeing the captive Sunnys and destroying all of the Pugs and Pug-bears. Now, my focus was on first capturing the additional ship.
We were meeting in the control room, the humans, Kasm and all of the Sunnys. I was trying to reach some consensus on the best way to capture the ship. Suddenly, Frazzle and Red both exclaimed, and we turned towards the video screens.
The new FTL was accelerating and leaving orbit! We'd possibly waited too long to attack. The ship was moving out quickly, but it looked as if it wasn't directly leaving the system. Instead, it was heading sun-ward. After running some quick calculations, Frazzle said, “Deys heading most likely for the moon base of the biggest planet. Maybe we can intercept them there.”
It looked like they were heading for Io. We maneuvered to drop back in orbit until Oberon passed out of sight around the rim of Uranus. Once we were hidden from direct view, we accelerated out at right angles to the ecliptic, then began to gradually turn so that we'd come towards Io from outside of the orbital plane. Frazzle turned on the EmDrive unit to its highest acceleration, and we traveled rapidly towards our goal. It was still going to be hours, but from his calculations, the other FTL wasn't traveling at anything like our velocity. We'd reach Io a little before they would, despite our much longer trajectory.
About midway in our pursuit, we determined that they were headed for Europa rather than Io. The two were currently on the same side of Jupiter, and that had confused Frazzle. He had been operating under the assumption that they were headed for the old Io base, but he suddenly remembered that the Pugs had also set up a small installation on Europa.
As we got closer, Frazzle tuned the comm unit to listen in and determined that the other ship was in touch with some Sunnys on the moon. From the chatter, it seemed like the FTL's bridge and Europa approach control were manned by Sunnys, so Frazzle took a chance and interrupted.
His call created considerable startlement on the others' parts, but they eventually got things straightened out. Both groups were frightened by the newly arrived Pug-bears and Pugs. The Sunnys on the FTL had suffered from the same poor treatment as had the ones we'd rescued previously. Many of them had been killed on their voyage, leaving only a skeleton crew to fly the ship. There were some Pugs on Europa, but they mostly kept to themselves, leaving the Sunnys there to run things. The Pug-bears had never been to that base since it existed solely to extract some dissolved minerals from the subsurface ocean. The Sunnys had determined that the Europa ocean held a high concentration of some essential mineral nutrients that both the Pugs and Pug-bears required, and they'd been forced to set up a small extraction and distillation plant.
Both the FTL's Sunny crew and those on Europa were pleased to hear that we were nearby. The FTL was carrying a large number of Pugs, but no Pug-bears. We'd have to figure out a way to neutralize that force if we were to take the ship.
After some discussion back and forth, the FTL Sunnys simply invited us to transport on board, provided we could quickly suppress the Pugs. We prepared a boarding party and all met in the hold to take our turn in the ship-to-ship transporter. Whistle had tuned it carefully to the other FTL's unit and we began to move through in groups of eight. Kasm insisted that his people compose the first two transporter loads. He didn't want to be insulting, he said, but they could probably have all of the resistance under control before we humans could get organized. I didn't disagree, having seen his people in training. They were very fast.
We went through in our turn to find that just a small group of Pugs was left alive. They had locked themselves in a service closet, and the Sim-tigers were making sure that they stayed inside. Kasm had rounded up the two Sunnys from the control room and had them in the hall near the service closet when we got there.
Not wanting to damage the ship in any way, I decided to speak to the Sunnys about opening the closet, but they had no English, so we waited until Whistle could make his way over. Once he arrived, the problem was shortly solved. The three scampered down the hall to a panel and opened it. They stuck their heads inside and busied themselves for a moment, then pulled out to have a face-to-face discussion. This evidently was productive because one of the two new Sunnys leaned into the alcove and began to rewire some circuitry while Whistle and the other one watched carefully over his shoulders. Suddenly, Whistle pointed at me, and I spun in time to see the closet door's lock turn from yellow to blue.
Everyone moved out of the direct line of fire, and I shoved the door open with my foot. There was no response. Finally, I peeked around the jamb, bending down near the floor. Four pugs were inside, standing near the back wall with their hands opened at chest height. They were obviously unarmed and didn't seem interested in a fight.
I was unsure about capturing them. I didn't want to be burdened with the obnoxious creatures, but it occurred to me that if we treated them well, we could send them through a transporter link to Europa to convince the ones there also to surrender. As long as there wasn't a resident Pug-bear to force them to fight, they might see the futility of resistance despite their fractious nature. With this in mind, we started to move them into a cabin that could be secured from the outside. I sent Whistle along with a guard of Sim-tigers to see to that task.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out well. Whistle came dashing back to me after about five minutes. The Pugs had somehow managed to access a storage locker they passed and had armed themselves. There had been a brief, intense fight, and all four of the Pugs were now dead, as was one of the guards. I was very unhappy about the loss of one of The People and resolved that when it came to Pugs, the rule in the future would be, “Take no captives.”
Now that we had the new ship in our possession, Europa was next on the list. The resident Sunnys were on the comm begging us to come and get them. They'd had enough of the conditions and also of the contingent of Pugs that were stationed there. We used the transporter in the new ship and came out in one of the smaller domes on the surface. The Sunnys were frightened of us, having never seen anything like our crew, but once again, Whistle proved a superlative mediator. He had them calmed down and transported up to the FTL in a few minutes.
The Pugs were all in a larger residence that was located a few hundred yards away. Rather than waste our time fighting and possibly taking losses, I contacted Frazzle, and together, we worked out which dome it was. We evacuated from ours, in case my calculations were wrong – I didn't want to run the risk of eradicating ourselves – and then Erin took a shot at the Pugs' dome with the bow gun on our armed FTL. She was deadly accurate, and the dome and a portion of the local landscape simply ceased to blemish the moon's surface.
I was contemplating the desirability of going back and trying to figure out how to separate the Sunnys on Oberon into a single location so we could zap the other domes when Whistle came to me with an interesting piece of information. The dome we'd just left had a second transporter link that was tuned to one in Estes Park!
In the back of my mind, I'd been trying to figure out how we'd return to Earth. True, we could fly the FTLs into orbit, and we had our original shuttle-craft to land with along with the larger one. I could bring all of the Sim-tigers down with the larger one alone. The new FTL we'd just captured was missing its rider shuttle. On the other hand, it would be even better to simply transport into the heart of the enemies' territory unannounced.
My disability continued. My psychic senses had not cleared up, and my ordinary memory still wasn't cooperating fully. I did remember that the original transporter that I'd come through from the park was a single connection, one that wouldn't allow us to connect with the ship's transporter. The local Sunnys informed us that the Pugs had set up a couple more of the units in Estes Park. These were advanced units. One of these third-generation transporters was currently connected to the Europa portal, but both had the ability to receive from any source that could match their digital-handshaking code sequence.
Knowing that the Pugs had reached Estes, I assumed that they'd chased off any humans that were there. I fervently hoped that they hadn't gotten much farther than that in their second invasion. The newly rescued Sunnys didn't know, but they had heard reports of heavy fighting that was holding up the advance.
We moved both ships into orbit around Europa, transported our entire force over to the newly captured ship, and then moved down to the sole remaining dome on the surface. I'd decided to use the transporter there to jump to the Estes location. We staged our main force, consisting of fifty-three Sim-tigers, three humans, and one rather reluctant Sunny in the dome, decided on our transport order, and then we were ready to begin to take the fight through to the surface of Earth.
Frazzle had taken charge of both ships and agreed to bring them into Earth orbit. He thought that he and Whistle could hack the handshaking code and re-tune one or both of the ship transporters directly to the Estes Park transporters. This part of the plan assumed that we were successful in our counter-invasion and could capture the Estes equipment.
If Whistle proved incapable of hacking into the Earth-side transporters, Frazzle would fly down in the smaller shuttle and bring enough tools and parts to make the linkage work. We would have the FTL ships, the shuttles, and a way back and forth from the surface. It was a good start if we could do it. Now, all we had to do was to go through and kill a mess of Pugs and Pug-bears.