Hand and Space: A Captain Brian Saber story Read online

  “If we had gone four more light years out, you would still have it.”

  He nodded, then turned again and put his hand on the window, pushing it flat, something he clearly couldn’t do in his old body back on Earth.

  After a moment, he turned back and looked at me. “Captain Saber, there was a reason you and Captain Leeds didn’t let me live out my last days not knowing the truth. And I’m sure it was not simply a gesture of kindness. So what can I do for the League, as you call it, to earn my keep?”

  I smiled, glad that the doctor had come around so quickly.

  “I honestly don’t know for sure,” I said. “I will let the League scientists brief you. However I do know that our enemy, the Dogs, have somehow designed some sort of major weapon that has the chance of disconnecting time and space and matter.”

  He thought for a moment, finally shaking his head. “I can’t imagine how that would be possible, now that I know my theory was correct. But I also don’t understand how it could be used as a weapon.”

  I pointed at the fleet as Dot told him the answer.

  “Almost all of the crews of all those battleships are senior citizens from Earth, just as the three of us are. It was the only choice the League had to get recruits quickly after we lost so many in that first war with the Dogs.”

  The doctor nodded. “Sever the connection, and we end up back on Earth, in our old bodies.”

  “And the frontier of the Earth Protection League,” I said, “all the League, actually, will be undermanned and outgunned and would fall.”

  “Where are the Earth Protection League scientists? I will need to get caught up quickly if I am to help.”

  I pointed at the largest ship in the center of the fleet. “They are on the Admiral’s ship, the Tuesday Morning.

  “Can you take me there?” he asked, again seeming to get lost in the fantastic view of ships and stars.

  “You’ll be taken there,” I said. “Captain Leeds and I have our own ships to get ready.”

  “Thank you,” he said, again staring at his healthy hand, flexing it. “I’ll try to repay this kindness.”

  “Just save us all, Doc,” I said.

  With that the three of us turned and left the lounge, stopping in the hallway outside. With a wink to Dot, I signaled we were ready for transport, and a moment later I was in the hallway of my ship, Bad Business, headed for the bridge.

  If I had anything to say about it, Dot and I and the doctor would be enjoying drinks and dancing in that lounge very soon, celebrating our victory.

  Chapter Four

  I strolled into the Command Center of the warship and dropped in to the big center chair facing a wall of screens. The Command Center was actually fairly small, with only three stations. Usually my second-in-command, Marian Knudson, a stunning redhead from Wisconsin, sat in the chair to my right, but this time I had moved her down to be in charge of communications. Just from what little I knew so far of this mission, I needed someone I could trust at the communications station, especially since I had a hunch we were going over the border.

  In the chair to my left was Kip Butcher, the best navigator in the fleet.

  I loved this small command center more than any place I had ever been in my entire life. It was the brains and heart of a very powerful warship. I liked the electronics smell, the sounds of faint alarms as systems went through checklists, and I really loved the feel of the thick, leather chair that perfectly fit my young form.

  “So what’s happening, Captain?” Kip asked, his boyish face turning to look at me with clear worry. Kip looked to be in his teens and had a face full of freckles. This far out Kip was actually only twenty-one. I was twenty-eight. Kip was the youngest member of my crew, but Dot had a few slightly younger.

  “From the best I can figure,” I said, “and what little information I’ve been given, we’re going to be getting a little younger. We have to take the fight to the Dogs.”

  “I hope I don’t have to fly this thing in diapers,” Kip said, shaking his head.

  Suddenly, across all the screens in the command center, an image of the area of space we were in came up. Admiral Lincoln’s voice boomed out of the speaker, and Maureen moved quickly to dampen it a little as I studied the three-dimensional chart.

  “Make sure everyone on the ship is getting this,” I said to Maureen and she nodded.

  “The Dogs are on the verge of creating a new weapon,” the Admiral said, “that will disconnect us all from this time and area of space and send us home.”

  I knew that much.

  “They are within hours of launching the new weapon over the border and sending it toward Earth, followed by their fleet.”

  “Hours?” Kip said softly, then whistled under his breath.

  I agreed with that shock. No wonder they were in a hurry to extract everyone and get us staged. I had no idea there was such little time.

  The screen showed the location of the EPL fleet, and then the location across the shield-like barrier that divided EPL space from Dog space. The weapon seemed to be on a planet in a system three light years beyond the border.

  “We’re going to get five years younger if we go in there,” Kip said, doing the quick math. “I’m going to have pimples again. Damn.”

  The illustration also showed a large fleet of Dog ships staging about four years on the other side of the planet. I didn’t like the looks of that at all. Our warships were far more powerful than Dog warships and we had beat them before numbers of times. But we just didn’t have enough ships out here on the edge to take on that entire fleet at once.

  The Admiral went on. “If we jump in and catch them by surprise, we’ll only be outgunned about three-to-one around the weapon. But that Dog fleet will be coming in fast, so we won’t have more than fifteen minutes at most.”

  “Ten,” I said.

  “Nine,” Kip said. I trusted him more than I trusted either the Admiral or my own rough calculations.

  “My first desire is to destroy everything on that planet,” the Admiral said, “including the weapon, but my science advisors warn me that if the weapon is functioning, that might set off a cascade effect. So we are going to let the science boys work on the problem of destroying the weapon for one more hour. Stand by at my command to jump in one hour.”

  At that his voice cut off, but the image of the border, the planet, and the Dog ships remained.

  “I sure hope the guest we brought can come up with something,” I said.

  “Who’s the guest?”

  “Dr. Jack Dalton,” I said.

  Kip laughed. “This ought to be messing with his brain. Didn’t he get discredited for even suggesting that all this is possible in physics?”

  “He did,” I said. “Let’s hope he’s not bitter.”

  Chapter Five

  I sat for the next forty-five minutes mostly just staring at the area of battle and the space between here and there. I knew for a fact that the Dogs were watching our fleet just as carefully as we were watching theirs.

  At one point, two more of our warships appeared as late reinforcements.

  No doubt if every ship in the EPL fleet prepared to jump, the Dog fleet would do the same and we would have even less time than the nine minutes Kip thought we might have.

  I slowly came to the conclusion that jumping the entire fleet at that planet just wouldn’t work.

  Suddenly I knew what had to be done. “Maureen, put me through to a private line with the Admiral.”

  She smiled. “We’re going in alone, aren’t we?”

  I laughed. “Just put me through.”

  As the Admiral came on and said, “Yes, Captain.”

  “Has Doctor Dalton come up with anything yet?”

  The Admiral glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the screen. “He believes a concentrated Electro-Magnetic-Pulse would shut the thing down safely and then conventional weapons could destroy it.”

  “If it’s running, how close can we get?”

&
nbsp; The Admiral punched the board in front of him, showing the planet. It took me a moment to see what he was showing me.

  “All the Dog ships are standing off, away from the planet,” I said. “The thing is running.”

  “It would seem so,” the Admiral said.

  I nodded, then explained my plan and my reasons for it to the Admiral.

  “That will buy you all time back here,” I said, “to rig up larger EMP weapons to stop it from a safe distance.”

  “Doctor Dalton believes the effects of the device will cover a sphere of two light years when launched.”

  Now I was confused again. “Where is it going to get that kind of power?”

  The Admiral sat back, then said abruptly, “I don’t know. I’ll be right back.”

  Beside me Kip’s fingers were moving at lightening speed over his computer board as the Admiral’s face was again replaced by the map.

  “No sub-atomic reaction can produce that kind of energy,” Kip said, “since the field it’s generating would shut it down.”

  “They are using the planet as a spaceship,” I said. “How big is that planet?”

  “It’s actually about the size of Earth’s Moon,” Kip said.

  “They are going to move something the size of the Moon and power that weapon at the same time?” I asked. “That makes no sense without the very process they are shutting down.”

  Suddenly Kip and I looked at each other, smiling. “They have a shield that protects their own power sources.”

  “Which means, given time, we can develop shields as well.”

  I again punched in a call to the Admiral. As his face appeared, I said, “They have shields protecting their power sources.”

  “That’s what Doctor Dalton just told me,” the Admiral said, smiling. “Can you buy us some time?”

  “I’ll be ready in ten minutes, Admiral. Could you have Dalton send over targeting and frequency levels of the needed EMP blast?”

  “I’ll do one better. He’ll join you in two minutes. And I’m sending the Blooming Rose with you. You’ll run the first wave, she’ll target with conventional weapons once you shut the thing down.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  It always worried me when Dot went into any battle, but I had learned to click off the worry and just trust her. And it only took me a second to do that again.

  I turned to Kip as the Admiral vanished again. “Can we focus an EMP wave tight enough to target that weapon?”

  “Ready in five,” Kip said, his fingers again flying over the keys. I watched, amazed. I knew for a fact that he had lost both hands and one leg at seventy in a car wreck. Yet there he was typing so fast his fingers looked like a blur. It had to be really hard for him to go back to Earth after each mission, but never once had I heard him complain.

  A moment later Dr. Dalton appeared standing behind me, looking sort of stunned at the sudden change of location.

  “They need to put a tingle or a noise on that transporter, don’t they?” I said, standing and shaking the doctor’s hand. “Great work.”

  “The other scientists did most of it,” he said as I had him sit down in an extra chair.

  I introduced him to Kip, then the two of them quickly got to work on the calculations for the EMP blast.

  “That’s powerful enough to shut just about anything down in that weapon,” the doctor said, nodding, “even if shielded from most EMP blasts. And that sudden shutdown will collapse the building subatomic field of the weapon.”

  “And if it doesn’t shut it down and we bomb the thing?” I asked.

  “With luck, nothing,” he said. “But it also might send a cascade wave through the area, in a radius of about ten light years. I suggested to the Admiral that just as we are about to attack the weapon he move his fleet back four or five light years.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “Captain Leeds,” Kip said, as Dot’s face filled the screen in front of me.

  “Captain,” I said.

  She smiled. “Captain. Are you ready?”

  I glanced at Kip and then at the doctor and both nodded.

  “Give the machine five seconds to shut down,” Dalton said.

  Dot nodded that she had heard. “We’ll be exactly seven seconds behind you, on the same path. “Don’t go stopping suddenly or we all might be in for a mess.”

  I laughed. “See you on the dance floor.”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. My dance card is pretty full.”

  With that she clicked off. That had been our ritual since our first night together dancing. So far it had pulled us through a lot of tight scrapes.

  I clicked on the com link to the ship. “Be prepared to lay down covering fire for the Blooming Rose on my command. Stand by for jump.”

  Kip nodded. “Course plotted and in. You have exactly five seconds to fire after we appear near the weapon. We’re going to be appearing right on the edge of those Dog warships standing off a distance from the weapon just to make sure we’re not affected by it, either.”

  “So all hell is going to break loose,” I said, nodding.

  “With luck, we’ll catch them by surprise,” Kip said.

  Marion’s voice over the com-link counted down from five.

  Five very, very long seconds.

  “Engage,” Marion said.

  A moment later we were five years farther out from Earth, and five years younger than we had been a moment before.

  Around us was a fleet of Dog warships, scattered in their standard, bowling-pin order, clearly just waiting to move.

  I targeted the large area that was the weapon on the planet below, focusing on the area that was the weapon part.

  “Up the frequency ten percent,” Dalton said beside me, staring at the readings on the screen in front of him. “It’s larger than we had calculated.

  Kip’s fingers flew, and an instant later he said, “Done.”

  And I fired.

  The invisible EMP blast hit the weapon base without any sort of impact.

  Usually when I fired at something, things exploded. Not this time, but I kept firing anyway.

  I could see that the Dog ships were turning, moving to attack.

  Dr. Dalton said beside me, “The weapon is shutting down.”

  At that moment, a Dog warship opened fire on us, rocking the entire ship with two solid hits.

  “Return fire!” I ordered.

  We kept moving as right behind us Dot’s ship appeared and instantly started blasting the base. Her shots made an instant and clearly-seen impact as the entire base started to shudder and explode.

  “Covering fire for the Blooming Rose,” I ordered all gunners.

  Dot ignored all the fire she was taking from the Dogs, as all of her weapons were trained on the planet’s surface.

  I didn’t know how long her ship could hold out, but my gunners were doing a fantastic job of blowing up the closest Dog ships, creating a shield of exploding Dog ships for the Blooming Rose.

  Finally Dot stopped firing at the planet and began firing at the attacking ships. I could see from the readouts that the Blooming Rose had taken some damage, but was still intact.

  “She’s done it,” Kip said.

  I snapped open a link to Captain Leeds.

  “Let’s go dancing,” I said as her smiling face appeared.

  A moment later Kip jumped us. I just hoped he jumped us in the right direction. I didn’t think he could get much younger.

  We appeared right beside our fleet at the point where they had retreated.

  A moment later the Blooming Rose appeared as well.

  And I let out the breath I was holding.

  On the view screen showing the Dog’s weapon planet, a fireworks display was happening; then after a moment, the Dog ships close to the planet jumped back to their own fleet.

  And a few seconds later the planet exploded, looking like a small nova going off.

  Wow, there had been a lot of energy on that planet.

/>   I glance at Kip, then turned to the doctor. “Did it work? Are we all right?”

  He was studying the readouts on the station in front of him. After a long moment, he turned and smiled, his huge brushy eyebrows going up into his hairline. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt this good in years.”

  Chapter Six

  Dot and I came off the dance floor, laughing and both out of breath. Even young, those fast songs of the 1950s were work. I liked the slower ones from the 1940s. I had many very fond memories of slow dances from those years, both with my wife in the 1940s, and with Dot in the last year.

  We dropped down into chairs next to Dr. Dalton, who had just finished a conversation with Admiral Lincoln who nodded to us as he left.

  Dalton was smiling wider than I had ever seen a man smile before.

  “The Admiral just got word from the League authorities that I will be allowed to stay out here and continue my work as a young man again.”

  He again opened and closed his hand, staring at it, clearly still stunned that he could do such a simple movement once again.

  “Wonderful, Doctor,” I said, patting his arm. “The EPL needs you to help develop those screens.”

  “We’ll be joining you sometime shortly,” Dot said. “I’ve got to get a wedding ring on this man’s hand before I lose him to one of those cuties back at the nursing home.”

  “No chance,” I said. “No one does applesauce like you do.”

  She laughed, and I pulled her back to her feet as a slow song started.

  One thing about being young again with an old mind, you treasure every moment and every dance.

  And right now, after escaping death once again, I wanted to treasure far more dances with the woman of my dreams before I returned to that wheelchair and that old body of mine.

  About the Author

  Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than 100 popular novels and well over 200 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.