Could see the Magellan shifting shields forward. Covenanter had done the same.
Just before their shields touched, Covenanter released torps.
Had to gape… Magellan’s shields contracted. Morgan or the captain released double torp salvo, then expanded the shields forward. Never had seen that done.
Covenanter never had a chance. Got fried by his own torps, shield flex, and the Magellan’s torps. Could have been that the Magellan’s mass alone, backed by the shields, might have been enough. Wouldn’t ever know, though.
Morgan didn’t take chances. Didn’t think the captain did, either, but didn’t know her as well.
Navigator needles, cleared to return and recover.
Control, Needle Tigress, returning this time.
Stet, Tigress.
Checked the farscreens again. No one left close to us. Screens still registered dissipating energy. All that was left of five needles and two frigates. Had trouble swallowing. My mouth was dry.
Followed Lindskold back to the Magellan for recovery. Cold sweat coated the inside of my skintights. Ahvyn pilot trailed me.
Checked the farscreens a last time before I dropped shields. Around Hamilton system, most of the hostiles had vanished—one way or another.
Still couldn’t believe that whoever it was—couldn’t have just been the Covenanters—had dared to attack Hamilton system itself. More unbelievable was that the Comity had been able to fight them off. D.S.S. must have pulled in every ship from hundreds of systems, if not all thousand. But how would they have known?
Navigator Control, Needle Tigress, standing by for recovery.
Stet, Tigress.
How could Comity D.S.S. have dared to concentrate so many ships, leaving systems defenseless? Bet Morgan knew. Bet he had a lot to answer for. Didn’t know as I wanted to confront him on it.
82
Fitzhugh
This time, after the battle, I’d waited outside the ready room, discreetly removed so that I could observe Commander Morgan’s appearance. As fortune, chance, or fate would have it, the commander did not deign to appear, and I finally made my way into the ready room.
Jiendra looked up from where she slumped in one of the chairs, exhausted. “You didn’t have to come.”
Lieutenant Lindskold smiled, then looked away before Jiendra could perceive her colleague’s amusement.
“You need nourishment, and separation from this locale would not be amiss,” I observed, “preferably before Commander Morgan appears.”
“He won’t be here. He’s got bigger problems.” She stood. “Could use a bite to eat.”
“Bigger problems?”
“Need to eat. We can talk then.”
Within a handful of minutes, Jiendra and I sat at the corner table in the mess, where she cut some form of formulated beef, drowned in a tan liquid masquerading as a sauce, with quick, exact strokes of a knife, then ate them with equally swift and precise bites.
“What is the probability that you’ll have to fight another battle?”
She swallowed, then sipped some lager that actually resembled closely the brewed product in both appearance and taste. “Doesn’t look likely. Not anytime soon. There must have been over a hundred Covenanter ships in Hamilton system. Saw more than fifty, and that was when things were winding down. Three, four times that many D.S.S. ships. We came in, looked like, on the tail end of a big-assed battle. Could have been bigger than anything since the Conflagration. Can’t say as I understand what brought it on, or why now.”
“You find it unsettling that the Covenanters and Sunnis and the CWs would sacrifice so many ships?”
“Stupid, first of all,” she pointed out, taking another quick sip of lager. “The CWs… I understand them. They wanted the Danannians’ technology. They didn’t attack Hamilton system, either. Just sent ships to Danann. Not that many, really. The Covenanters and Sunnis didn’t want anyone to have it. Understand that as well. But sacrificing so many ships? Makes no sense.”
“It does if you consider that, for them, the technology is something God never meant human beings to have. Because it came from another species, it had to have come from Iblis or Satan.”
“Still stupid.”
“It’s not precisely a question of intelligence, but of beliefs. We all have beliefs. Certain sets of beliefs enhance intelligence while others restrict the scope of its application. True believers, theocratic or otherwise, are those whose beliefs limit their applied intelligence. Throughout history, they’ve always been so. This… conflagration merely proves that little has changed. The Covenanters are monists in a multiplex universe.”
“You think it’s all over?” Jiendra’s vocal intonation, despite the inquiry, professed skepticism.
“You comprehend, all too well, my dear lady…” I shouldn’t have said that. I hurried on, trying to explain. “… that it has scarcely commenced. The Danannians, for lack of a better term, applied their technology to create a brane flex in a higher or different dimension, or another side of reality, or whatever, and they had enough power to push through at least a globular cluster. Cleon Lazar has suggested the possibility that they may have taken an entire galaxy. How or what they did doesn’t matter, except for one thing. Can you conceive of what that might be?”
“Liam…” She laughed. “You sound like a professor.”
“Professor or not,” I continued, essaying not to lecture, or not too much, “they created an entire new universe. For true believers, that’s something that only a deity can do. That leaves the true believers with a number of difficulties…”
“Aliens as powerful as gods, for one.”
“Or as powerful as they believe God to be, or as powerful as the mythical Satan, and a universe or a series of universes that can go on forever, for another, and where humans aren’t the most favored or the most powerful species, for another, and that’s particularly hard for those believers who insist humans are made in the image of God and foremost among his creatures.”
Jiendra laughed, and I just took in her face.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“Do you think the scientists will ever figure out what’s behind all that stuff?” she finally asked, pushing aside an empty plate.
“Cleon Lazar has figured out some of it already, but it won’t be very useful as it is…”
“Why not?”
“The universe has changed since then. Oh… not in the grandest sense, but the comparative strength of atrousans and gravitons was stronger then. They’ve estimated that the surface gravity on Danann might have been close to one-point-five Tellurian. Cleon tried to explain the physics of it, and I still don’t understand. It has something to do with what you might call frequencies of brane flexion. Because everything is related to everything else, the relationships remain constant. One of the keys has been around for a long time, in astrophysics, where the age of the universe doesn’t work out quite right if the speed of light has been a constant since the prime flex. The higher gravity might be one rationale for why all the towers were shorter than anyone thought. And why the scientists thought everything was overengineered. It wasn’t.”
“Did they have Gates?”
“It’s not likely. According to Cleon, Gates wouldn’t work in the earlier times of the universe. Atrousan density was too high.”