Aldebaran Defense Read online

  The Rels are up to something.

  Astrogator Cai and Captain Nick Steele must race against time to discover where the alien Rels are going in such numbers. Once they realize where their enemies are heading, they face the even more daunting prospect of ordering the evacuation of a well-settled system.

  Will the crew of the Laughing Owl stave off disaster for the Aldebaran colonies, or will the Rels take their revenge for the Owl’s strike on their home system?

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  Aldebaran Defense

  Copyright © 2017 A.C. Ellas

  ISBN: 978-1-4874-0357-7

  Cover art by Carmen Waters

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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  Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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  Aldebaran Defense

  Astrogator 8

  By

  A.C. Ellas

  Chapter One

  “There’s another one,” announced Juan Cortez, the executive officer of the Laughing Owl. “That makes ten in the past three days, sir. They’re up to something.”

  “Acknowledged,” Captain Nick Steele replied. He touched a spot on his screen to increase the magnification of the sensor feed and studied the spherical Rel ship. It was a larger ship, nearly two klicks in diameter. It had just appeared at one of the hardpoints along the system’s heliopause and was heading into the system at a high speed.

  For the past year, in the wake of their daring attack on the Rel home system, the Laughing Owl had been deployed in enemy territory with orders to observe and report. They were currently drifting in an asteroid belt between the orbital tracks of two gas giants, neither of which were nearby at the moment.

  Cai had selected their position with care, placing them in an area where the Rels weren’t actively mining the asteroids and which afforded them a good view of the rest of the system. They were technically above the plane of the ecliptic, barely, but not so high that the Rels would notice them as suspicious—this asteroid belt was wracked by the gravitational forces of the two giants, both much larger than Jupiter, and there were space rocks floating near them.

  They had been in this system for eight weeks now. They knew the routine traffic and activities of the Rels in this corner of their empire, so the increase in traffic over the past few days had been very obvious. Nick settled back in his command couch and dropped into the shipnet. “Cai?”

  “Juan’s right, they’re up to something.” Cai’s shipnet voice was deeply nuanced, putting Nick in mind of a very deep pond, unruffled and serene on the surface, hiding numerous secrets and dangers below, the whole of it edged in vibrant life with a hint of icy peppermint flavoring the air. “I’m attempting to extrapolate their probable destination, but there are many variables to account for. The analysis will take some time.”

  “Understood.” Nick turned his attention back to the Rel ship, which was accelerating along a now-familiar curve. “This one appears to be heading for the same exit point as the others.”

  “It will take a couple of hours to confirm their exact course, but it does appear that way.”

  “Where does that hardpoint lead?”

  Cai named the system immediately but added a caveat. “That system has a dozen hardpoints that I know of. They could be using any one of those exit points. The list of possible destinations grows almost exponentially with each layer of new systems and hardpoints to consider. I’m crunching the numbers, but I’d be happier following them.”

  “So would I, but we can’t risk discovery.” Right then, they were a hole in space with an eye-skewing black hull and all sorts of emissions dampeners between their double hull. Moving with the same relative velocity as everything else in the asteroid belt, they were emitting no detectable radiation and were, therefore, invisible. If they applied thrust, necessary for any course adjustments, they’d leave a detectable trail of ionized particles in their wake. The planets they’d used to shield their inbound approach were no longer in good position for departing their current position.

  “The Rel ship will pass close by this position in two point three hours,” Cai told him. “I think I can reach an interception point without emitting a detectable amount of ions.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “So we can hide our exhaust in their exhaust, of course.”

  Nick got it. “You want to position us that close to their stern? Or whatever they have that passes for a stern?”

  “We’re invisible, aren’t we? Let’s put the tech to the test. We need better entry and exit options for enemy systems anyhow.”

  If it works, we’ll be able to use the trick again. If it fails... well, we’re faster and stronger and Cai doesn’t need a hardpoint to jump. Nick decided. “Okay, Cai. Do it.”

  “Thank you, Nick, implementing course change now.” Several of the maneuvering thrusters fired—they used a noble gas, xenon, and since it was chemically inert, ionization was nearly impossible. At first, nothing appeared to happen. Nick hadn’t expected to see immediate results, the Laughing Owl was a good-sized ship and the amount of thrust provided by the jets was tiny, but the effect was cumulative and the laws of thermodynamics did apply out here.

  Laughing Owl slowly drifted into a new position, and there were some tense moments as the Rel ship approached them nearly head-on. Their stealth tech had never been put to such a test as this, and Nick had to remind himself to breathe as the Rel ship got closer and closer. It slid past them with barely fifty meters between them. Cai had already positioned the ship so that they were pointed in the direction they wanted to go, now the Astrogator smoothly inserted Laughing Owl into the stream of ionized particles flowing from the spherical stern of the Rel ship.

  Nick’s attention remained focused on the Rel throughout Cai’s maneuvers, alert for any sign of detection, of weapons powering up or of fighters being launched. None of that occurred. The Rel remained oblivious to their presence. Nick wasn’t especially happy about tailgating an alien spaceship with less than a hundred meters of separation, but Cai’s idea was working so far. If they remained undetected all the way to the hardpoint, Nick would concede the idea was brilliant, not that he minded giving Cai such a concession in general, but in this case, he really did want it to prove out first. This could still go fubar in a pico.

  “At our current speed, we’ll reach the hardpoint in six hours,” Cai told him over the shipnet. “Are you planning to glare at that Rel’s ass for the entire six hours, or can I talk you into coming home long enough to eat lunch?”

  “You’re leaving the Chamber?” Nick was startled; he’d assumed Cai would retain his full linkage to Laughing Owl until they were out of danger. He bit back the protest he wanted to utter, wisely, as it turned out.

&
nbsp; “Well, no. I’ve had my six rig for battle conditions. But you need to eat, too. I know you too well, m’dear. I can free up two of my adjuncts to whip up something for you.” Cai paused, but Nick could sort of taste his amusement. The shipnet was an awesome, powerful tool that enabled the crew to communicate almost instantaneously, but sometimes, the processors came up with very strange analogues. “Of course, it might be fun to just whip you up, hmm? But that’ll have to wait.”

  Nick snorted in amusement but waved off the offer of food. “I’ll have something sent up from the galley.”

  Cai signaled his acceptance over the net without actually saying anything.

  Much of the Astrogator’s attention was on the Rel ship, just as Nick’s was, but he could tell that Cai was far busier than if he were just monitoring. Whatever Cai was doing, he was using most of the computational power of the ship’s computers. He thought about saying something but decided not to interrupt Cai for his trivial curiosity. It’s probably the probability problem he’s working on to figure out where these Rels are going. How many variables, how many hardpoints does he have to consider? He’s got a head for math, but after a point, the problem becomes mindboggling, which is why we’re tailgating a Rel battle cruiser and hoping it can’t see us.

  * * * *

  Astrogators were able to slow their perception of time, turning seconds into long minutes. During a jump, when the number of decisions that needed to be made ramped upward into the hundreds per second, this ability was a crucial need. Cai didn’t often use it outside of a jump, but he was using it now. The probability calculation was taking up an ever-growing percentage of his attention and resources. At the same time, he had to remain alert to the least indication of detection from the Rel ship. He was so close he could hear them, like a low-level buzz in the back of his mind. He knew also that they had the usual load of human prisoners—slaves—and their mental voices were quite clear to him and very distracting.

  Those poor tormented souls, he mourned. Nobody knew why the Rels seemed to hate humans; they always attacked and not once had communication or diplomacy been attained. The human remnants rescued from the bowels of captured Rel ships were enough to give even strong people nightmares. As much as Cai wanted to reach out and end the suffering of those human slaves, he wasn’t sure he could kill mind to mind and remain sane, and of course, if all the humans over there died, even the most oblivious of Rel captains might wonder why and start actually looking for them. Cai didn’t have a lot of confidence that he’d remain undetected in that case. Hell, all they’d have to do is spray the local area with chaff.

  He immersed himself in numbers. Cold, hard numbers, logical and predictable, were both distraction and salvation for his mind. And while all of this was going on, he remained aware of himself, his ship-self, to a microscopic degree. The ions of the Rel’s exhaust pattered over his skin; he analyzed the pattern and replicated it so that anyone looking would see what they expected to see. A repair crew was fixing a dogged hatch, a funny sort of ache-cramp that would soon be resolved.

  The air purifiers fed used carbon dioxide-laden air to the algae tanks and hydroponic gardens. Clean, oxygenated air was siphoned off and sent throughout the ship—water and waste products were similarly dealt with and recycled. Nothing was wasted; everything was reused. Cai’s ship-self was an ecosystem in and of itself, similar in many ways to the human bodies that inhabited it.

  Just about the time when Cai started to feel the effects of spending too much time in time dilation, his calculations arrived at several startling conclusions. He did a double check of the math, but the numbers had that solid feel of rightness to them. He allowed normal time to resume. They were halfway to the hardpoint. He wished he could sleep—those three hours’ objective had been closer to two days subjective. He forwarded the predictions to Nick.

  “Which target is the most likely?” Nick asked after a short delay.

  “Aldebaran, sixty-seven percent probability. Once we’ve jumped to the next system, I’ll be able to increase the confidence level of the most likely target into the ninetieth percentile. All the possible permutations are decided by the exit point in that system.”

  “Understood. Cai, you sound tired. Are you okay?”

  His husband’s concern was touching, but he hadn’t realized that he was letting his exhaustion show over the net. “Subjective time spent on this problem was much greater than objective. It’s not safe to rest until after I jump.”

  “I’ll have a hot meal waiting for you,” Nick assured him. They exchanged some idle pleasantries before breaking the direct connection.

  Cai refocused his attention on the Rel ship he was following. It hadn’t wavered a single meter off the course all the alien ships had followed. He personally thought a more optimal trajectory existed, one that could bring him to the hardpoint well before the Rel would get there, but he couldn’t do that without giving his presence away.

  He slowly dropped behind the Rel, killing his thrust and relying on momentum, inertia and invisibility to avoid detection while continuing toward the hardpoint. The gap grew until the Rel jumped, sloppily as usual, a full fifteen minutes before he reached the hardpoint himself.

  It was with a distinct feeling of relief that Cai called up the jump protocols, sounded the warning klaxon and dropped back into the realm of pure mathematics. This math wasn’t as fuzzy as probability calculations, but it was also far more complex. Once more, he stretched objective time out of all recognition to buy himself the extra minutes required to perform the calculations. Across the ship, crewmembers were climbing into their acceleration couches—if they weren’t already in them—and strapping down.

  The calculations ended, and Cai reached deep into the core of the singularity that was Laughing Owl’s heart and twisted something untwistable. Laughing Owl slid into subspace and slipped downhill, accelerating at a furious pace. Cai soared over the void that lay between where he was and where he wanted to be, grabbed the edge of the system he wanted and forced Laughing Owl up the steep slope until he had a solid-enough hold on his destination to untwist the untwistable and slide back into real space. He wasted no time in scanning his environs.

  As planned, he’d emerged well outside of the heliopause, another point of blackness inserting itself into the black void of the space around him. Nothing was nearby, the Rels had never, in Cai’s experience, flown a ship out this far. They went to the heliopause and no further because that’s where the hardpoints always were and the Rels had to jump at a hardpoint. Cai had no such requirement. Hardpoints were far easier to jump from, but he could jump from and to anywhere he wished.

  He was too tired to analyze the data. After making sure he hadn’t been detected entering the system and setting a course that would carry them around the system as if they were orbiting the binary stars in the center, Cai collapsed the linkages between himself, his adjuncts and the ship’s systems. As weary as if he’d been in battle, he staggered leaving his couch. If Si-El hadn’t been there to support him, he’d have fallen flat on his face. He walked, with the adjunct’s assistance, out of the Chamber and into Nick’s waiting arms. Like usual in the privacy of their chambers, Nick was nude—except for the collar around his neck and the cuff around his scrotum, both locked, both declaring him the property of Cai.

  Chapter Two

  Nick carried Cai into the bedroom. His spouse was a tall man but not a heavy one. Cai was rail thin, in fact, and had trouble keeping weight on due to the high metabolic needs of his body. Nick laid Cai in the bed then settled himself at the head of it, positioned both to be near to Cai and also out of the way of Cai’s adjuncts. The six adjuncts needed access to Cai right then; one of their primary functions was to take care of their Astrogator. They knew exactly what Cai needed and exactly how to get it done.

  However, Cai didn’t appear to be in any distress. He isn’t overtaxed then, just exhausted. Nick monitored the humming cylinder on Cai’s belly as it collected the Ga
tor’s metabolic byproduct from the drug known as Synde. Without Synde, there could be no Astrogation, because it acted as a bridge between organic nervous tissue and inorganic computers. Synde was considered by most to be harmless, even though it was known to be addictive, but it was dangerous in its raw, unrefined form, which was what Astrogators used. Even the refined, commercially available drug would be lethal at the doses Astrogators used.

  Astrogators were able to deal with the poison, converting it by some biological mechanism to a different molecule—a drug called Essence, which was the only known antidote for Synde poisoning. The source of Essence was a well-kept secret, one Nick had no problem keeping, though he did occasionally tease Cai by commenting on the various flavors of Essence—as various as the Gators who made it, in fact. Though truth be told, Nick actually liked the taste of Cai’s Essence. It tasted of peppermint—cool, refreshing, with a hint of sharpness, rather like Cai himself.

  The bag was full now, so Nick deftly removed it from the cylinder and attached an empty bag in its place. The full bag sealed automatically, Nick set it aside for one of the adjuncts to deal with. Cai’s skin was no longer flushed, his breathing had evened, his body was now relaxed, all from removing the excess Synde from his system. Nick smiled down at Cai just as those intensely blue eyes opened. “Hungry, love?”

  “No, just tired.” Cai stretched his long, lean body then patted the space beside him invitingly.

  Nick repositioned himself alongside his spouse then pulled Cai into his arms. He wasn’t surprised to hear that Cai wasn’t hungry, the adjuncts had set up an intravenous catheter to feed him sugar as well as fluids in addition to the nasal tube they used to make sure Cai got enough Synde to continue functioning.