Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Imares Broghuilio experienced the feeling close to panic that comes with being aware of having regained consciousness, but of nothing else. He didn't know where he was, or what had preceded the present instant. He just… "was." Peculiar patterns of light seemed to shrink and grow and whirl in his head. It was if his mind had somehow disintegrated into a billion fragments and was now only beginning to form itself together again. He was lying on a hard, uncomfortable surface and felt stiff and cold, as if he had been there for some time. The only sounds were the muted hum of machinery and a steady whoosh of air blowing from a ventilator.

He opened his eyes. For an indeterminate time that could have been anything from a few seconds to a matter of minutes, the farrago of objects, shapes, patches of color, and centers of light that he found himself looking at refused to take on a coherence that conveyed meaning. The side of his head hurt, as if he had struck it. Then a flat, synthetic, voice from somewhere intoned, "Unstable resonance condition abating. Reintegrating to normal space after unscheduled h-transfer. Arrival coordinates unknown. Locator call not being acknowledged. No grid activity detected. Evaluating."

The words cued the pieces of visual imagery to assemble themselves together to become the interior of the bridge deck of a Jevlenese spacecraft. A groan from nearby completed the process of nudging Boghuilio's mental faculties back into motion. Crisis… Local JEVEX nodes down… Thuriens and Terrans have thwarted the plan… Get away and regroup… Emergency transfer to Uttan.

It was coming back to him now. Five Jevlenese ships carrying Broguilio, recently proclaimed premier of what had turned out to be the short-lived Federation of Jevlenese Worlds, his immediate circle of accomplices, and a hard core of followers, had taken off from Jevlen in a bid to escape to their secret fortress-factory planet, Uttan, where they would be able to hold out while they reconsolidated and made new plans. But the Shapierion, which by rights shouldn't have been anywhere near Jevlen, had appeared out of nowhere, bearing down in pursuit. After the underhanded dealings that had evidently been going on for some time between Calazar and the Earth, the Shapieron could have been carrying Terrans with Terran weaponry. The Jevlenese ships would never outrun an old Ganymean, self-powered starship in normal space. Broghuilio had ordered immediate h-space transfer to Uttan.

Uttan was where the real JEVEX system had been secretly relocated. The activity supported at Jevlen, which was all the Thuriens had known about for years, was a shell operation. But when JEVEX attempted to project a spinning black-hole transfer port for the five ships, some other force attempting to counter it had intervened, causing the vortex to go unstable and creating conditions of violently tangled and convulsing spacetime. It could only have been VISAR, trying from light-years away to block the transfer, but with nothing to guide it apart from inadequate information from one of the Shapieron's reconnaissance probes dogging the Jevlenese's heels. Attempts at evasion came too late. Impelled on an irreversible gravity gradient, the five Jevlenese ships had plunged on, into the turmoil of scrambled Relativity.

The groan came again. Broghuilio mustered his energies, winced as his head lifted from the deck plates, and hauled himself up sufficiently to turn and sit with his back against the base of a console. Wylott, the former Jevlenese Secretary of the Exterior, since appointed Commanding General of new Federation's military forces, was hunched over in one of the operator-station seats, holding his face in his hands. A trickle of blood had run down from between his fingers onto his sleeve. Broguilio brought a hand up to feel his own face and his beard. He found nothing wet or sticky. Garwain Estordu, the scientific advisor who had been with them, was lying along an aisle between cabinets and equipment panels, still unconscious. Around them, the captain and other members of the crew who had been in the vicinity were either motionless in assorted crumpled and splayed positions, or slowly beginning to move and show signs of life. "Full evaluation not possible at this time," the computer that had spoken before reported. "Matrix and system files have been disrupted. Necessary to run deep-scan diagnostics, repair linkages, and reconstruct. Acknowledgment requested… Repeat, acknowledgment requested… Proceeding."

Broghuilio registered the situation dully. His eyes drifted upward to take in the main display screen overlooking the bridge deck. It was showing a view of space and stars. So at least that much was still working… To one side of center was the disk of a planet. It was not Jevlen. Nor was it Uttan. It wasn't a world that Broghuilio recalled seeing before at all.

There was no doubt about it. The planet was Minerva, accompanied by its moon. The spectrum, size, and mass of the parent star, something like three hundred million miles away, were identical to that of Sol, and then a telescopic survey of the surroundings had picked out Jupiter. The star pattern was as projected from that point in space-except that it had to be corrected to allow for the passage of fifty thousand years. There was no signal of any kind to indicate any presence of the Thurien h-grid, and nothing on any of their communications, navigation, or data bands. Nor should there be. There was no Thurien presence in this part of the Galaxy. VISAR, as such, didn't yet exist. The Jevlenese ships were back at Minerva, before the time of its destruction.

Even Broghuilio was too numbed by the realization slowly seeping into his brain to show much of his customary bellicosity. "How is this possible?" he whispered to Estordu, now recovered sufficiently to sit in one of the crew stations, but still shaky.

The scientist ran his gaze over the displays for the umpteenth time as if a part of his mind still retained a hope that their message might have changed somehow. "What we entered was a total dislocation of spacetime. It has jumped us to another region of the quantum totality. I can't tell you how. Nothing in physics has ever predicted anything like it."

"So how do we get back?" Broghuilio demanded.

Estordu shook his head bleakly. "The energy concentration that it took could only be created by systems with the capacity of VISAR and JEVEX focusing through the h-grid. There is nothing like that here. We have no way of getting back." Broghuilio's face colored and began to swell. "You can shout as much as you want, Excellency, but it won't change anything," Estordu said. "What we should be thinking about are the options we have here. There is no other choice."

Such talk from the normally obsequious Estordu was so out of character and unexpected that Broghuilio stopped as he was about to speak, deflated, and for a moment just stared. Maybe Estordu was still more traumatized than he showed. The Captain and other officers within hearing, and other members of Broguilio's staff who had appeared, digested the information somberly.

Wylott had a mild gash on one cheek but nothing worse apart from a bruise or two. "So we are without primary h-grid power?" he concluded. "Just the auxiliary system?"

"So it appears, General," the captain said.

"We will need to put down somewhere soon," Wylott observed.

A barb congratulating Wylott on his brilliance began forming reflexively on Broghuilio's lips, but then died. Sarcasm would get them nowhere. "Captain, convey the situation to the commanders of the other vessels," he ordered. "Have them stand by for further instructions."

"Aye, aye, Excellency."

Broghuilio paced across the floor to stand staring up at the main display, still showing the view of Minerva, while he thought. He still needed to keep a hand on one of the consoles to steady himself, he found. He wished now that he had made the effort to learn as much as was known about precataclysm Minerva when the opportunity had been there. But he had concentrated on the Earth surveillance program, managing the information reported to the Thuriens, and secretly building up the Jevlenese military capability. His face was turned toward the future, he had been fond of telling his subordinates. What was past was past and didn't concern him. The words had an ironic ring to them now.

He had talked about Earth as the new power base of the Cerians, but that was more for the propaganda value. He really didn't know that much about the Cerians, other than that they were one of the two superpowers whose eventual catastrophic war had destroyed Minerva. The Thuriens had taken the survivors of the other side, Lambia, back to their own part of the Galaxy, eventually installing them on Jevlen. That made the Jevlenese "Lambians"; it followed that the Cerians were the enemy. Broghuilio's historical analysis and any ideology stemming from it had never really gone a lot deeper than that. He looked at the moon, half lit behind Minerva's disk.

"JEVEX." The prompt was a mental reflex. There was no response. Of course, JEVEX wasn't there. He turned his head to speak over his shoulder. "Advisor Estordu. What can you tell me about the Lunarians' technical capabilities at this time? Military organization and weapons capability in particular."

"The most we have to go on is the events of the final war-which obviously hasn't happened yet. But even by that time, the phase they were at was still primitive-rudimentary nuclear and beam weapons; off-planet capability just sufficient to contest near space and establish long-range bombardment installations on their moon, and some robot surveys sent to Earth. But indication are that most of the advances necessary to produce even that occurred toward the end, as militarization on both sides accelerated."

"So they're probably still in the early stages down on Minerva," Broghuilio said, his eyes still fixed on the screen. "They aren't present on the moon to any significant degree yet."

"Possibly so, Excellency. A telescopic survey of the surface would tell us more. Also a profile of communications traffic."

Broghuilio stared up at the image for a minute or so longer. Although ostensibly Jevlen-based transports, his five ships were fitted with armaments that the Thuriens never knew about. Also, they were still holding cargos of the kinds of weapons that he had been bringing in from Uttan as part of his buildup. Between them they were carrying somewhere between two thousand and three thousand of his supporters, most of them trained and with experience of the war games staged in remote places-the exact number was uncertain, due to the haste in evacuating from Jevlen. He turned, his hands clasped behind his back. "Very well. You have all had time to consider the situation," he told his aides. "What plan do you recommend?" He looked at Estordu.

"What? I… That is…"

Broghilio's eyes shifted to Wylott. "General?"

"Well, it's hardly… I mean, in view of the suddenness of the changed situation."

Broghuilio took in the rest of the company. "The experts do not have a plan," he informed them. "I, however, do have a plan. We do not know at this stage how effective the Minervan space surveillance systems might be. Since they don't have any interplanetary activity worth talking about, I would expect them to be minimal. But let us not take chances. Until we have formed a clear strategy, we would prefer our presence not to be known. Out here in space, we are vulnerable to detection. Assuming that the moon turns out to be still sparsely occupied-which I predict will be the case-we will put down there and effect a temporary camouflaged base. A small landing party will be dispatched to Earth to reconnoiter the situation and make contact with such authorities as seem advantageous to our interests. If they are in the early phases of growing hostilities, working to develop weaponry and tactics, it isn't as if we have nothing of potential value to bargain with. I trust you take my point, Gentlemen?"

Wylott began nodding slowly. "Ye-es. Of course."

"Advisor Estordu, commence arrangements at once for a survey of their moon," Broghuilio ordered. "I want a report of any visible surface installations and communications activity."

"Yes, Excellency."

"Captain, send orders to all craft to maintain orientation with minimum radar profile toward Minerva in the meantime. General Wylott, we need an inventory of the weapons complement we are carrying, along with a personnel count and breakdown by skill rating and specialty category. Also a schedule of equipment to be readied for a surface base."

"Sir."

As the seniors relayed orders and the bridge area began bustling into life, Broghuilio felt himself slipping back into his familiar role. So those amateurs down on the planet thought they knew something about war preparations, eh? Maybe he could introduce a few concepts they hadn't thought of yet. And who knew? It seemed that the ambition he had nursed to become the warrior overlord of Jevlen had been frustrated. If there was no going back, then there was nothing to be done about that. But, maybe, a different world instead, perhaps? His face was to the future. What was past was past. He surveyed the scene around him with satisfaction.

"Evaluation completed," the bridge deck computer announced proudly. "We are at the system of Sol, positioned eight hundred thousand miles from the planet Minerva, time-shifted negative fifty thousand years."

"Turn that idiot thing off," Broghuilio snarled.