Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER FORTY

The Jevlenese lighter nosed its way into the Shapieron's cavernous main docking bay amid service gantries and access ramps, located the marker flashing over the assigned berthing doors, and attached. The bay could be closed and filled with air for extended loading and unloading or maintenance work on the ship's daughter vessels, but it was not necessary on this occasion.

Broghuilio led his party through the lock cautiously. The huge, deserted vessel seemed somehow sinister in its emptiness and quietness, as if beckoning them on into a trap. They found themselves in a large open area with conveyors and freight-moving machinery, and wide corridors leading away in the direction of the interior of the ship. Broghuilio stopped and looked around. The construction was of the solid, heavy engineering of a bygone era, not like the light and colorful Thurien designs that he was used to. He felt more as if he were in the lower levels of an old, abandoned city than the inside of a spacecraft. As a warship, fitted with the weapons from his own craft, it would be invincible.

Even with the emptiness, there was an uncanny feeling of being watched. Maybe it was the emptiness that produced the feeling. He looked warily from side to side. "Where is the controlling system?" he called out. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," a disembodied voice answered, echoing in the vaults and chambers. It sounded as if it were coming from a tomb. Beside Broghuilio, Estordu shivered nervously.

"We will require guidance in making our inspection," Broghuilio said.

"To where do you wish to be conducted?"

Broghuilio tried to muster more effort to sounding like someone in charge. "Let's start with the Command Deck. We will view the plans and layout charts of the vessel there."

"Follow the blue lamps to your right. They will lead you to a transit access point. A capsule will be waiting."

"Follow me," Broghuilio said to his party. Best to fit into the role right from the beginning.

In the Shapieron's surface lander standing fifty miles off, Garuth watched the progress of the Jevlenese despondently over the link that ZORAC was maintaining. Shilohin, the rest of his crew, and the three Terrans who had remained up on the ship looked on silently. They knew his anguish and sympathized, but there was nothing they could say that would alleviate it. They had all known him long enough not to hold any blame. The calculation he had been forced to make was brutal, and every one of them would have reached the same answer. But to be driven from his own ship, and now have to sit out here like some exile in banishment, watching Broghuilio strut around assessing his property. Garuth still couldn't bring himself to look any of his crew in the face. He didn't think he would ever feel like a starship commander again.

Shilohin had approached. She spoke from nearby behind him. "Don't torment yourself, Garuth. You chose as you had to. We are not Terrans. We have no experience of dealing with threats of violence against others, or of gauging the seriousness of such intents. All of us are alive and unharmed. That is your first responsibility. You could not have risked the threat of Broghuilio's weaponry. What did you have to bargain against it?"

Garuth sighed heavily. "The worst is this feeling of… of utter helplessness. It doesn't sit well with a commander. You say we are alive and unharmed. That is true. But for how long? What incentive does Broghuilio have to complicate his situation by keeping us around once he has control of the ship?"

"Perhaps a very strong one," Shilohin said. "Alive, we are hostages. It's the only way Broghuilio can keep command of ZORAC. You see my point?"

Shilohin did have a point. And being honest with himself, Garuth admitted inwardly that he had allowed himself to get too focused on what he saw as his ignominy to have thought of it. "Yes. And it's a valid one," he replied. "But not much of an existence to look forward to."

"But it's an existence. And it gives us the one thing we desperately needed after walking in unprepared to such a shock as we did. It gives us time."

A communications supervisor brought a message to one of the aides, who conveyed it to Freskel-Gar. "Count Rorvax is calling from Dorjon. Maximum priority." Freskel-Gar strode over to the screen indicated, where his deputy was waiting, looking worried. The implication was that there was a problem to do with Hat Rack.

"What is it?" Freskel-Gar asked.

"It's been turned around. The flight. Cerian ground control has rerouted it and ordered it down to a low level. They're not divulging its destination. Cerian interceptors are already airborne and heading for the area. Obviously they know."

The news came like an unexpected punch in the face. It couldn't be… Not when everything had been going like a smoothly running machine. It was one of those rare moments in Freskel-Gar's life that his thinking processes seized up, if only for an instant. The mystery human, Hunt, was looking at him across the floor from where he was still standing with the colonel. From that distance, he seemed to know; as he'd said he did. Who else knew?

This was desperate. It called for fast thinking. "We need to be the first to go public," Freskel-Gar said. "Make it sound like a Cerian hijack. Kidnaping Perasmon…"

Rorvax shook his head. "Perasmon is already on the air, saying the Cerians have nothing to do with it. He's calling for Lambian military units to remain loyal." Even as Rorvax was speaking, stirs began breaking out around the room, with officers signaling for Freskel-Gar's aides to get his attention.

"We have to abort Hat Rack," Rorvax urged. "The world is watching that flight now. The Cerians are publicizing that they have received a threat alert and have diverted it. Nobody could imagine that Cerios was responsible if it's downed now."

Freskel-Gar stared hard at the screen, his mind fighting against the capitulation that acceptance would signify. But there was no way around it. He nodded heavily. Rorvax turned away to issue instructions.

One of his staff approached. "Your Highness. Forgive the directness, but it is imperative that you see this. The king and President Harzin are speaking to both nations. They say a plot has been discovered."

Freskel-Gar moved across and listened numbly. Reports began coming in elsewhere of movement orders being given at the regular army's central barracks in Melthis; a call to the commander at Dorjon to lay down arms and open the gate; signs of hesitation, suddenly, among some of Freskel-Gar's own units. Never had he known such a well-conceived and executed plan to unravel before his eyes in so few minutes.

He looked again at Hunt, still watching him. The strange light-colored eyes seemed to be laughing, mocking. Fighting down the uncharacteristic spasm of anger that he felt flaring up inside suddenly, Freskel-Gar clamped his jaw tight and moved over to him. "So, you knew. And what else do you and these Giants from the past know?" he demanded.

"Midnight to Hat Rack Leader. Acknowledge."

"Hat Rack Leader. I hear you."

"Abort and return to base. Repeat, abort and return to base. Do you read?"

"Understood. Confirm, returning to base… Hat Rack Leader to Flight. Form on me and turn at one-eighty. The show's canceled. We're going home."

A frequency-monitoring processor interrupted to inform ZORAC of an incoming signal and request for response. ZORAC activated the message analyzer subsystem and requested it to report. The transmission was from the probe last seen entering the region of spacetime convulsions on the heels of Broghuilio's fleeing ships, fifty thousand years into the future of a different reality. The probe's self-repair diagnostics had completed a lengthy reintegration of the onboard software after a major system disruption, and was standing by for further instructions.

"… And what else do you and these Giants from the past know?" Flurries of activity were breaking out around the room, with Lambians at different stations calling to Freskel-Gar's staff and vying for attention. Hunt was unable to make out exactly what was going on, but from Freskel-Gar's shaken manner and expression it was evidently serious. Wylott seemed to be suspecting Broghuilio's motives. Somebody on the screen that Freskel-Gar had just been speaking at had mentioned the words "Hat Rack," but to Hunt they didn't convey anything. He knew only that he had to get his thought through to ZORAC somehow. But even if he talked to ZORAC, he would never be able to get the message across with Freskel-Gar's people all around him… But maybe the others would! Hunt played the only card he had.

"Can't trust Broghuilio," he replied to Freskel-Gar. "The Giants from the starship. What is happening?"

"You saw. They are removed from the ship."

"Out in space. Defenseless targets."

"They have not been harmed."

"I wish to see myself."

"You see there, on the screen."

"I see just a surface lander. I wish to talk to the Giants' captain."

"How?"

"The computer will connect us."

"The computer controls the starship. I won't let you talk to it."

"I just want to talk to the captain. To know they are safe."

"Broghuilio assures us they are safe."

"Pah! Broghuilio's own general doesn't trust him. If the Giants are safe, I will bargain. You will learn what else we know besides Hat Rack, what else can happen. Otherwise, I have nothing to tell you."

Freskel-Gar didn't look happy about it, but Hunt's mention of Hat Rack seemed to make an impression. He nodded curtly. "A brief word only. Then we talk."

Hunt was led over to the panel where he had addressed ZORAC before. Freskel-Gar and aides stood behind and around him. "ZORAC?"

"Yes, Vic?"

"Is Garuth out there in that lander?"

"Yes."

"With the remainder of the crew and the three Terrans?"

"Yes."

"You have a link to them from the Shapieron?"

"Stop." One of Freskel-Gar's officers interrupted, raising a hand. "What is this Shapieron?

"The name of the ship," Hunt told him. Freskel-Gar nodded for him to continue. "Can you connect me?"

"No problem."

"Audio only," the officer who seemed suspicious of everything instructed. A few moments passed.

"Vic?"

"Vic speaking. Is that you, Garuth, in the surface lander?"

"Yes. I-"

"I must be quick. Being monitored by people converged around me. Checking on your safety. We see ships converging around. I feel an expanding bubble of anxiety that I am unable to suppress. Please confirm."

There was a pause. Hunt could almost sense Garuth's bewilderment at the strange choice of words. Freskel-Gar shuffled impatiently. "We are unharmed so far," Garuth answered finally. "I understand your concern, and am grateful." Another pause. "I do understand."

"Enough," the officer pronounced. Hunt was moved away, back across the floor. Somebody across the room relayed a message that Hat Rack had been aborted. Suddenly, an instinct told Hunt what it referred to. His hopes took an upturn. Now, all he had to do was play for time.