Star Blaze (12 page)

Now Johnny looked, the Plican did seem very pale and two of its eight tentacles were dangling limply outside of its body. It didn't help that the
Spirit of London
lurched suddenly, banking very sharply, pushing the injured creature up against the walls of its cylindrical home. Johnny looked past it and through the ship's hull beyond, where the stars were rotating. They were turning unusually fast.

“My apologies,” said Sol. “I observed a long-range sensor sweep emanating from the fleet ahead. Any power signature, including my own, would be detected within the region of space two light seconds away.”

“Do you think they spotted us?” Johnny asked, now totally alert.

“Certainly not,” Sol replied. “The sensors are of unusual design. Embedded within them is a secondary carrier wave that appears to act as both a targeting beacon and a dispersion field. Once a power source has been identified, it is instantly fired upon. Observe …” The viewscreen changed to reveal a small convoy of Ke Kwan transports, the long rectangular vessels that carried freight across the galaxy. The end vessel was clearly marked as a medical supply ship. Sol cleverly highlighted the limit of the sensor sweep with a shimmering band of particles,
which the lead ship was passing through.

“We've got to warn them,” shouted Johnny.

“It is already too late,” replied Sol. “I began recording this on leaving the fold. The ships are on the far side of the search area. The greater the distance from us, the further back in time we are looking. This took place approximately 27 light minutes and 18.281 8284 light seconds away. It has already happened.”

There were four ships in the convoy, each resembling an interstellar brick rather than the streamlined designs of science fiction stories. In the near vacuum of space, sleek aerodynamic designs weren't always necessary. The first had only just crossed the boundary when the front of its dull brown hull began to glow, quickly turning bright orange, as the particles that comprised it were excited beyond their safe limits. Slowly, and horribly, the whole thing began to disintegrate from front to back. Once the leading edge of the hull had been vaporized, the guts of the transport were exposed. It was like watching someone's internal organs spilling out of their body. Any crew inside must have suffered an equally horrific fate. A freezing vacuum normally made short shrift of organic tissue, but a couple of escape pods had been launched. Then, only seconds later, the same orange glow reached them and they were efficiently and completely destroyed.

The second ship must have witnessed it all happening and tried to steer clear but, though it narrowly avoided a collision, it quickly fell victim to the same dispersion field, which began to take effect in one corner. It was like watching a horrific car crash in slow motion. Johnny, Clara and Alf were all shouting, urging the transport to escape, but its outer hull was soon breached and cargo began to leak from the open decks, as fires blazed. Volatile elements simply bubbled away into nothingness, while the rest were once again left to be systematically torn apart, until only their very atoms remained to be scattered across nearby space.

While all this was happening, the third ship plowed straight into the disintegrating remnants of the first two, explosions ripping through one side of its hull until anything that was left of all three vessels disappeared into one, slowly expanding, gigantic fireball.

The very last Ke Kwan transport, the medical supply ship which would have received the most warning, looked to be OK. Though its turning circle was large and slow, it had begun early and, unlike its sister vessels, only grazed the inside of the kill zone.

“They're going to make it,” said Clara, her hand tightly squeezing Johnny's arm as she stood behind him.

“Come on,” shouted Johnny, urging the lumbering ship to move through the curtain, out of danger and into normal space.

Then the rear of the transport began to change color, a wave of orange destruction passing rapidly along it, far faster than the snail-like vessel was able to fly. Although a small portion at the very front end remained intact, there could have been no survivors.

A long silence followed on the
Spirit of London
's bridge. Alf removed his bowler hat and bowed his head a little. Johnny felt the anger rising inside him. The transports' crews had simply been doing their jobs, minding their own business. They didn't deserve those terrifying final few seconds. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and he knew it could just as easily have happened to his own ship—at least if Sol hadn't been as alert as she was. “How many on board?” he asked.

“I think Ke Kwan transports are lightly crewed,” said Clara. “Less than a dozen on each.” Her voice was shaking and her face red.

“Four ships too,” said Sol, bitterly. “Unable to defend themselves or their crew. One carrying nothing but medical supplies. They should be avenged.”

It was rare for Johnny to hear the ship so angry. He left his chair and walked forward. Although Sol was everywhere in the ship, it made him feel closer to her and he knew she was hurting. He could only guess at the connections between the minds of the different craft that plowed the emptiness of space together. He rested his palm on Sol's vocal display screen—through the special link he had with his own ship he sensed Sol's loss and tried to comfort her.

“They will be, I promise,” he said quietly. Johnny peered at a nearby display. “But there must be more than twenty Andromedan ships out there at least. You can't fight them all.” Given half the chance, Johnny was quite sure that at this particular moment there was nothing more that Sol wanted to do. “I don't think there's much point hanging around,” he went on, quietly. “It's important we get back to Earth.” The other gel pod at the back of the bridge opened and out came a bedraggled Bentley, shaking the remaining goo from his coat. “Not so fast, Bents,” said Johnny. “Sol—get us out of here.”

“I don't think we can,” said Clara. “The Plican's really sore—it's like someone's burned the ends of its tentacles. Couldn't we just go round for now?” She looked at Johnny hopefully.

Sol cut in, the anger still present in her voice. “There is another reason why we shouldn't leave yet. All Imperial ships are designed to respond automatically to distress beacons. That is why I unfolded prematurely. It may be we can still offer assistance.”

After witnessing four innocent ships destroyed, everyone was minded to help if they could. Alf walked quickly over to a navigation terminal near the front of the bridge. He placed a finger directly into the console and became rigid while absorbing the data. When he loosened up, he turned to Johnny and said, “That is interesting. The signal did not come from the Ke Kwan transports—it originated from deep within the dispersion field.”

“Whoever they were, I suppose that was why they were in distress,” said Clara.

Johnny was thinking, absentmindedly stroking underneath Bentley's collar as the sheepdog nuzzled his head against Johnny's legs.

“It does not compute,” said Sol. “Perhaps it is a trap … a lure to draw us inside to the rescue. No ship could have sent that message as she would automatically have been destroyed.”

“Unless,” said Johnny, wondering if he was really about to say what had just occurred to him. “Unless the ship didn't have a power signature.”

“Master Johnny,” Alf replied, throwing his hands in the air. “In all our spaceship design lessons there is one feature that has remained constant. Every propulsion system requires some sort of energy source—ours is the dark energy core. Do you not remember the laws of thermodynamics? None is one hundred percent efficient—they all leak energy and radiate some sort of power signature.”

“There's one design we haven't covered,” said Johnny. “What if the crew knew about the dispersion field? What if they used a solar sail?” Alf and Clara looked at Johnny as if he'd gone mad. He tried to explain. “Earth … Terran scientists think you can fly a spaceship with the stellar wind, the particles a star gives off when it shines. If the sail's big and light enough.”

“But that couldn't work,” said Clara. “Every time you got near a star you'd be blown away from it.”

“You could tack,” said Johnny. “It was part of my homework. You can't sail straight into the wind, but you can go toward it, at an angle.”

Clara didn't look at all convinced, but Alf said, “I suppose it would be possible … theoretically.”

“Sol—what form did the distress signal take?” Johnny asked.

“It was an ancient, universal distress code,” Sol replied.
“Delivered in the form of a monochromatic pulse.”

Johnny hadn't heard that phrase before, but was pretty sure another word for it would be “laser.” An image flashed into his mind—a purple-haired girl pointing a gigantic cannon into his face. “It's not a trap,” he said. “There's a ship, powered by a solar sail, out there and we're going to rescue it. If we don't, the Andromedans will either kill or capture them—and we're not going to let that happen.”

“Master Johnny—do you really think that is wise?” asked Alf. The android was fiddling with his bowler hat, twiddling it round between his fingers. “You saw what happened when the other ships approached.”

“That's why we have to do it,” Johnny replied.

“Even though I cannot fold, I can power down all my systems before we enter the dispersion field.” The determination in Sol's voice was there for all to hear. The ship continued, “The distress beacon lasted for 0.318 31 seconds—from that I can extrapolate the future position of the target vessel. Entering the search field at full speed, cutting engines and power, we can intersect her flight path in 12 minutes 56.637 0614 seconds.”

“Let's do it,” said Johnny.

They were flying blind, but after coasting through space at around eighty percent of the speed of light for nearly ten minutes, they had to be close—so long as the other ship hadn't altered course, in which case they would never find it. Alf was in the shuttle bay with the entire deck already open to space, preparing the grappling hooks to pull the sailing ship inside. Before turning her gravity generators off, Sol had set herself spinning about her long axis, like a giant bullet shooting toward her target. By aligning himself with the center of the ship, Johnny was able to remain weightless, but the further away from
the axis you went, the heavier you became. Bentley was bounding around the outside of the bridge, tongue dangling out as he panted from the exercise, occasionally lapping from his water bowl, perched on a nearby console. Meanwhile, Clara floated close to the Plican, trying to coax the creature into being ready to fold when the need arose. It didn't look to be working.

Bentley growled. Johnny looked over to see the dog's legs moving while remaining stationary, having cleverly matched his speed to Sol's rotation. The Old English sheepdog was staring fixedly out at the same patch of empty space and, the next moment, began barking furiously. Johnny used the top of the chair to push off and floated across. As he went, he quickly became heavier and ended up crashing into the transparent walls. He dusted himself down and began to jog along, matching his speed with Bentley's. It was difficult, but he stooped down and tried to soothe his friend's barks by stroking his coat as they ran. He followed the sheepdog's gaze, but Bentley seemed to be barking at nothing at all.

Then he saw it, blacker than space itself. The exact shape was hard to make out—the only way to see it was to look for the background stars that were missing. As he stared, a structure began to take shape out of the darkness, stretching toward him like a giant space urchin akin to the sea urchins he'd seen pictures of. The Andromedan vessel was covered everywhere in needle-like spikes of different sizes (some many times bigger than the ship itself), all barrels for the fearsome weapons systems it doubtless carried. They were going to pass very, very close—probably less than ten kilometers. Johnny gulped and held Bentley's collar, slowing the sheepdog until the pair of them were rotating with the spinning hull. Every few seconds the sinister black craft came into view. Now he knew what to look for, Johnny was able to survey the whole sky. The thorny black ships slowly revealed themselves as his eyes became more
accustomed to them, every one converging on the same spot toward which the
Spirit of London
was also heading.

He'd seen films where submarines in danger of detection ran totally silent, when even a hint of noise could give them away. It couldn't hurt to try that now so he softly held Bentley's jaw closed until the sheepdog ceased barking. Then he pushed off the wall toward the captain's chair in the very center of the bridge. Weightless again, he shut out the image forming in his mind of Captain Valdour impaled on
Cheybora
's bridge, and strapped himself in. It was vital to be ready the instant he might need to act.