The Abyss

The final star gate was completed, and by all the signs, not a day too soon. Swift-moving Soviet reconnaissance vessels moved with increased frequency and boldness just out of firing range, marking the numbers and combat readiness of the Third Fleet, and even, if they knew what to look for, the progress of the Gate itself. Nothing else trackable moved within the vicinity; but Hayes’ knew this meant nothing. The Russian anti-detection screens, as demonstrated by earlier encounters, were vastly improved, and their four Supercarriers (by the latest intelligence) were capable of full e-light warp from well outside the arc of his surveillance. And at that speed...

The Dreadnought remained still while her troubled mites hurried back inside the womb, hopeful of escape. As if literally animal young, they seemed to sense for the first time in their half-wakened minds the presence of a shark, or some other dreadful creature, that shared those depths with them, wishing them harm, and more powerful even than the mother, who from time of first consciousness had been the very symbol and embodiment of strength. Now into their dark hole she would crawl, and emerge again far, far away.

The last chute was raised, and the goliath moved slowly forward, gathering speed, eradicating the trivial miles which separated her from the Gate, and from the possible undoing of the civilized world. Earth! The hexagon was now clearly visible as it loomed larger and nearer, surrounded once more by the dwarfed engineering vessels which had shaped it, and with its might, burned out the hollow darkness beyond. What would become of these, since the frame had been mined, with orders to destroy it upon the passage of the Dreadnought, none could say.

Hayes leaned forward in martial attitude against the rail before the screen, his lower jaw locking tight, then releasing, like a vise-grips. Frank stood at his short distance from him, churning with emotion. They were drawing closer. As so many times before they would pass through. But this time, on the other side would be...

A succession of brilliant white lasers leapt out of nowhere and converged upon the cold blue Frame, which in turn glowed sullenly from within, convulsed, blew outward and came apart. The Gate was shattered, and would no longer serve.

“Reverse thrust!” someone shouted. The engineering vessels, of their own volition, had begun to scatter in all directions. Two seemed partially crippled, and one moved not at all.

Hayes let out a sound more bestial than human, after which he bawled, “Where did those shots come from!” A technician turned towards him as if to answer, but his face was deathly white.

Hayes strode toward him with his arm raised, as for a blow. “OUT with it!”

“From the Dreadnought, sir.”

“From WHERE on the Dreadnought!”

The man hesitated, and Hayes really did strike him. He wiped the blood from his mouth, and with his eyes to the floor said numbly,

“Auxiliary Laser Deployment.”

As if cued by these words, the young officer that Hayes had berated on the eve of the Schiller conquest rose and came forward.

“I did it, you dirty old son of a bitch. You’re not going to destroy MY home.” He whirled to address his stupefied compatriots, who had turned from their stations to face him. “It’s all been a lie! Stone didn’t order any of this, and Plant didn’t kill him. It was THAT bastard,” pointing, “and Hesse that---”

He never finished the sentence. Hayes, purple with rage and every vein of his forehead bulging, struck him a savage blow across the head with a conduit wrench, the first object that came to hand. The man fell limply forward, not quite unconscious, emitting a weak grown of pain.

At that moment two MP’s rushed into the room, and Hayes ordered them to lift him by the arms and turn him around. The pistol that he always carried at his hip he raised and held at arm’s length. It was clear that he meant to shoot the man.

“Stop it!” cried Frank suddenly, rushing between them. “You can’t just kill a man without a trial ... for doing what he thought was right.” It was equally clear that Frank himself was unsure of the truth, and had been unnerved by the youth’s allegations.

“Who the HELL do you think you are?” bellowed the other. “Giving ME orders! Stand aside or I’ll kill you both.”

This was too much for the MP’s. Who was their rightful commander? What was happening? They looked at each other in confusion, continued to hold the gunnery officer, though less firmly. Indecision reigned upon the bridge.

It was at this moment that Chaos played her final trick.

“Admiral,” spoke an officer, who had turned back to face his station. “Two enormous Carriers have just come out of warp. Super-Soviet configuration. Bearing 00, 666.

“It’s the Russians, sir.”

“It’s the Russians, sir.”

“Now look what you’ve done!” cried Hayes in his fury, unable to realize that all Frank had DONE was to keep him from killing a man untried. “Get him out of here.”

The MP’s looked again at each other, then at Frank, not knowing who was meant or what should be done. The latter inclined his head swiftly, and they took the young officer away. As they left it, Calder entered the enclosure.

Hayes whirled in fuming circles, ordering the chutes to be lowered and the attack-ships discharged. The officers at their stations either carried out his instructions or turned to Frank, who with a gesture of weary despair raised his arms as if to say, “What else can we do?”

“We’ve got to move away from the gate, General,” came the timid voice of the deployment officer.

“Then do it, ass! Take us back and to port.” And Hayes rattled off some meaningless coordinates. Like a gored lion he stalked back and forth, out of control, breathing too deeply and at intervals releasing desperate, maddened execrations. Another hesitant voice.

“They’ve ... They’ve begun to discharge and form ranks.”

“Of COURSE they have! They didn’t come here to talk!”

In his earlier, false-confident musing, Hayes had said that it would take twice the Fleet’s strength to overmatch him. And that was exactly what he now confronted---two Soviet Supercarriers, each nearly equal in girth and firepower to the Dreadnought queen, and each bearing a greater number of swarming killer bees.

The Russians did not attack immediately, but remained at some distance, waiting perhaps for all their vessels to be deployed, or to be sure that Hayes was alone and the fight would go their way. Nor did the Americans make the first move, intimidated and dismayed by the sudden change in their fortunes, staring across the void at the ever widening fence of the opposing Armada.

An army used to winning, rarely knows how to face defeat.

The Dreadnought had drawn back and away from the remains of the broken Gate, so that now it lay ahead of them and far to the left. The out-ships as well, low on fuel and tentative, spread outward so that two almost parallel walls were formed, filled with eyes. The would-be combatants faced each other across the margin that they themselves created: the empty distance of war’s chasm, that unholy no-man’s land wherein, once entered, frightened men kill frightened men until one side has had enough.