A Twist of Destiny Bk. 02

"I'm sorry we're such a burden," I said solemnly. "Maybe we should dial it back a bit for you?"

Holly2 scoffed at that. "Are you kidding me, Dad? It's, like, a badge of honor to be harvesting your children for you. About twenty years uptime from my subjective present we'll hold the world record! Keep making babies, Dad. You, too, Darren. Knock these ladies up as often as you can. We'll have an army of family by the time we're done, but we'll be an army that no one would ever fuck with. And that's a fact!" She glanced down at her monitor. "Congratulations, Dad, you're a momma. Hold still."

After about ten minutes all of our embryos had been harvested and Holly2 left with her cargo after she kissed each of us lightly (and lovingly, but not too lovingly!). We all enjoyed our respite and just stayed where we lay, enjoying some light conversation and a few giggles until I heard the subspace transceiver blaring from my office. I reluctantly reverted myself to full male form , clothed myself and told the house computer to route the call into the living room.

The holographic Ops officer that I'd left in charge of the Athena looked like death warmed over. "Sir, we have a situation."

I cocked a curious (and skeptical) eyebrow at the "man" and nodded. "Very well. Report."

"Sir, long-range sensors show eighteen ships have entered our solar system. They've just passed Pluto and they're moving at sub-luminal speeds."

That surprised the hell out of me but, considering my recent adventures, it probably shouldn't have. "Let me guess," I said. "It's The Horde."

"The ships do bear a striking resemblance to the Horde ships that you destroyed in the Kholain system, sir. Yes."

Chapter Thirty-Four: Sacrifices

I took a deep breath through my nose and blew it out. "Notify The Guardians. Ask them if they want to join in the defense of Earth against The Horde. If they do, beam them up immediately. I'll be up in a moment." I turned to face my family and they were already on the move. Kathy and Holly were each at a computer station to look for what the news might be saying, if anything, about the impending invasion. Darren was heading for the panic room where I kept a lot of emergency supplies (the panic room was, in all fairness, more like a bomb shelter- underneath a subterranean house- which was about the safest place for them to be if things got bad). Meanwhile, Grace had formed clothing for herself and it matched mine. She stood to attention and seemed prepared to execute any order I might give her.

"You're staying here," I told her flatly.

Grace, however, shook her head. "Negative, sir. I am your second. Where you go, I go. I know that ship and how to run it probably better than you do- the benefits of being fed information on a technology that, from my perspective, had been in existence for many years. It's untried knowledge, true, but it's more than the rest of your team has. My place is with you, sir."

"What happened to 'Father'?" I asked.

Grace blinked. "Sir, in times of crisis I expect that we will be working to put an end to that crisis. As captain of the Athena and leader of The Guardians, I am yours to command. In any other capacity, though," she added with a sweet smile and sparkling eyes, "you're my father. Or I can call you Daddy, if you prefer."

I smirked. "From you? Father will do nicely. Fine. Come with me. We'll have to work out the details later. And remind me to reprimand you for insubordination. You know where the ship is located?" She nodded. "See you there."

I 'ported to the ship and found that my team was already aboard. Aventine looked as trim and fit as she had nine months earlier. I wanted to congratulate her on the delivery and ask questions, but it wasn't an appropriate time just then. The best I could manage was to gaze significantly at her abdomen, smile and then give her a slow, congratulatory nod. A second later Grace appeared. She had a red stripe running down her right arm, just like mine. The others looked like they were about to hit me with a thousand questions at once, but I held up a silencing hand before the shouting could begin.

"This is Grace. She's my daughter. It's a long story and kind of complicated and if you really want to hear it, I'd be more than happy to do so... later. And get ready to have burning ears when you hear it. I know this seems like nepotism, and in some ways I guess it is, but it's unintentional: Grace is my second in command aboard the Athena. She truly is the best and most qualified person for the job, which you will understand when I explain- later. For now... I want to know how long it'll be before The Horde are close enough to be considered an imminent threat."

The Ops holo-officer spoke up. "They will be within striking distance of Earth in thirty-three minutes, forty-seven seconds, sir."

I looked at all of the flesh-and-blood people on the bridge (which seemed a lot more crowded than I preferred). "Conference room. Now. Ops, hail General Hannis and route the call to the conference room."

We moved quickly as a team, with me at the lead, into the conference room, which was just across the hall from the bridge's main entrance. As soon as we were seated, the feed to General Hannis' office came up on the situation monitor. He seemed surprised to see me. "David? Well, this is an unexpected sur-"

I didn't let him finish his sentence. "General, we have an emergency. The Horde have entered our solar system and are headed this way."

"The- what, now?!"

"Yes, sir, now. Long-range sensors indicate that they'll be a clear and present danger to Earth in half-an-hour. I've assembled The Guardians on my ship and we're prepared to meet the assault fleet in a few minutes. Contact whoever you need to start bringing up Earth's defenses. The Horde fleet is eighteen vessels strong. They mean business, sir."

The general's face was ashen with shock at the news I was giving him, but he wasn't cowed by it. He steeled his nerves and nodded curtly. "Understood. Thank you, NightShade. I wish you and The Guardians luck and hope for your success... and if prayers will help, I'll send those, too. We'll do the best we can to prepare here. Hannis out."

The screen went blank and I looked at my team, with Grace sitting at the opposite end of the table and watching me carefully. "All right, guys," I said quickly, "we don't have much time to hammer things out. Grace, you take the Helm. Those people manning the stations right now are holographic simulations, but they're far more familiar with how to run those workstations than any of us are. We need to focus on coming up with strategies on-the-fly. We have only one ship against eighteen. When we faced off against them at Kholain, the odds weren't much different but we had surprise on our side. They might have learned how to adapt to our weapons between then and now. I will command the ship and expect orders to be taken. I am, however, open to suggestions as long as they're well-thought out and you're quick about spitting it out. Any questions?" No one opened their mouth to speak. I nodded with satisfaction and stood. "Good. Let's get to work."

We made our way back to bridge and Grace made a beeline for the Conn/Pilot station. Her fingers flew across the touch-sensitive control screens like she'd been working on it for years, even though this was the first time she'd ever set eyes on it. "Setting in an intercept course now, sir," she reported. "Moving at three-quarters impulse."

"Three-quarters?" Tommy asked with surprise. "Why not full impulse?"

I started to answer his question, but Grace beat me to it as Mars loomed large on the main viewscreen. "Full impulse is just below the speed of light," she explained. "Their current rate of speed is close to three-fourths of the speed of light. We will meet them halfway in order to give Earth enough time to prepare its defenses, just in case we don't stop them completely."

"Ops," I said, before the conversation could continue, "I want a full scan of that fleet yesterday. What've they got?"

"Their armaments and shielding seem unchanged from your last encounter with them, sir," he reported. "There are eighteen ships in a wide six-point facing formation, staggered three deep. The gap between each point is one-hundred miles. The leading ships are heavily armed. The third set is similarly armed. The second set have almost no weapons or shields, but seem to be towing some sort of cargo."

"Scan the cargo."

"Inconclusive, sir," he said sourly. "They are all identical. They are devices of some sort but I can't really tell what they are intended to do. They don't carry any warheads or explosives, though."

"Mines?" Aventine guessed.

"Maybe," I narrowed my eyes in quick thought. "On screen."

The main viewscreen changed its focus and we saw pretty much what the Ops holo-officer had reported. The Horde fleet charged at us without varying their formation even the slightest bit, all of them moving past spatial debris as a single unit.

"They're protecting whatever it is that second set of ships is carrying," Tank rumbled. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

I nodded in agreement. "Hail them." The Ops officer tapped some keys at his station and then gave me a nod to speak when I was ready. "Horde vessels, I am Captain David Shayles of the starship Athena. You have violated our solar system with what we believe is hostile intent. Please respond and explain yourselves or we will be forced to treat you as an aggressive enemy."

"They're coming to a halt, sir," the Ops officer called out. "Still no reply."

I shook my head. "I wasn't really expecting one, but I had to try. Any indication as to why they stopped?"

"Yes, sir. The second set of ships have disengaged from their cargo." There was a pause before he added, "Sir, I'm reading a high concentration of neutrino particles at the center of their formation. Readings are beginning to fluctuate wildly, sir."

"Hypothesis?" I asked.

The Ops officer shook his head. "I can only speculate, sir, but it seems like they are somehow using neutrino particles to destabilize space-time in that area. It has all the earmarks of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, sir."

"A wormhole? They're using neutrinos to create a fucking wormhole?" Tank grated. "That's impossible!"

"Theoretically, it's very possible," Grace said calmly. "The Horde are hostile scavengers. They probably picked up the technology, or at least the technique, from one of their conquered races."

Suddenly there was a flash at the center of the Horde formation and a massive disc of energy and light filled the area between all six points. Even while the Ops officer was scanning the energy disc, we could all plainly see that something was starting to emerge from it. "Sir! There's an object coming through the event horizon. The leading portion gives the impression that the object is spherical and the projected size of the object is roughly one thousand miles in circumference. It's a small planetoid, sir, made almost entirely of ice."

"A thousand miles?" Aventine said skeptically. "That's almost the size of the moon."

"Hell, it probably is a moon," Tank added. "Or it was, until they moved it."

"Composition?" I asked.

The officer at the Science station piped up. "Hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and methane, sir."

"The Horde are throwing Planet Hoth at us?" Leviathan asked with bewilderment.

As we watched the gigantic ice ball grow larger, I shook my head. "It's not a fucking joke, Tommy," I said. "The wormhole isn't the threat. The volume of water in that giant ball of ice is the threat. Science, if a body of ice that large was introduced to Earth's atmosphere, what would happen?"

"Sir, the outer layers would melt away due to friction as it entered the atmosphere. The core, however, would not diminish fast enough and would impact with Earth's surface. The impact would be an extinction-level event."

"No different than being hit by the grandfather of all asteroids, right?"

"Yes, sir. As soon as the object impacted with planet Earth, the effects would be cataclysmic, resulting in an almost immediate destruction of all life on the planet, provided that the impact itself didn't shatter the planet first. The entire event would last approximately seven minutes."

"Jesus Christ!" Leviathan cried out in shock.

"Afterwards, presuming that Earth remained intact, the water that was accumulated in the atmosphere would then scatter across the planet, be absorbed into the eco-system and cool the surface off over a period of roughly one hundred years, whereupon it could be inhabitable again."

The description was definitely a grim one, but it was only a worst-case-scenario. "We won't let it get to that point, Tommy," I said calmly. "Science, would breaking the ice ball up into smaller pieces prevent such a cataclysm?"

"It would, sir, but only for a short time. The smaller pieces would end up melting in Earth's atmosphere, but the water would then be trapped in Earth's gravity well, enter the atmosphere and then be added to the existing water on the planet. Earth's eco-system would become drastically unstable. Weather patterns would become severely dangerous, tidal forces with the moon would destabilize and there would be flooding on a global scale. That would lead all to another E.L.E, except that it would take longer."

"How long?"

"No more than seventy-two hours, sir."

"I fucking hate these bastards," Tank growled.

The ice moon, by then, was just over halfway through the event horizon of the wormhole and showed no signs of slowing. I wondered, idly, how The Horde had managed to propel the thing but gave up on that line of thinking- it was academic, as it was headed towards our home and that was the primary concern. "Ops, how long until that spheroid, henceforth designated as 'Hoth', reaches Earth at its current rate of speed?"

"Eight hours and seventeen minutes, sir."

"Would our ship's tractor beams be of any use in moving Hoth out of Earth's path?" I asked.

The officer answered promptly. "Negative, sir. Its mass, volume and momentum are too great for the Athena to affect it in any appreciable manner. It might work if it were broken up into smaller pieces, however."

"David," Leviathan said, "I have an idea."

"Good," I said tersely, "because I'm running out."

"Send me out there in a suit or a shuttle or something. Let me get close to it. I mean, whether it's frozen solid or floating around as steam, water is still water. I can control it. Maybe I can send it somewhere else. Yeah, it's the size of the moon, but it's still water, right?"

I shook my head at him. "It's a good idea in theory, Tommy, but I can't send you out there alone. If the Horde attack you then a shuttle won't be enough protection and a suit would be even less."

"So run interference for me or something," Tommy countered. "I don't care. Just get me close to that thing and I'll move it! If they attack me, I'll just phase myself. They can't hurt me when I'm phased."

"Stop it, Tommy," I said. "Look, if you phase shift while on this ship or on a shuttle, you'll end up in open space. God forbid that you should be in a fucking suit. It's suicide."

Leviathan steeled himself and looked me straight in the eyes. "No, David. It's my job."

We held each other's gaze for a long, silent moment and it was obvious that neither of us was willing to back down. I looked away from him, though, and said, "Forget it. Find another solution."

"David!" he shouted. "We don't have the time! If we don't break it up into smaller pieces and use the tractor beams, we're fucked. Using weapons to break it up will cause more problems. I can break it down in a controlled way. Now get me out there, right on top of it if possible, and cover me while I do my fucking job and save the goddamn planet!"

I looked at him again, this time studying him very carefully. I probed his mind deliberately. He was absolutely certain that his idea would work. And it probably would work, but it came with too much risk to him. "I can't let you risk your life like this, Tommy."

"Bullshit," Leviathan snarled. "We're soldiers. I signed up knowing full well that I was risking my life for my nation and no one batted an eye about that. David, this is our planet that's on the line. Take the fucking risk! If I don't succeed, it's not like I'd have all that much to go home to anyway. We're called The Guardians for a reason, right?"

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was right. "Helm, match course with Hoth. Tommy, you'll ride outside the ship on a tether, in a suit."

"Why not use the transporters?" he asked.

"Because you'd materialize in the path of that thing at a dead stop," I told him. "It'd smash right into you faster than you could react. When our speed matches Hoth's, we'll cut you loose right in front of it so that you will be moving at the same velocity. If so much as a pebble is in your path it could punch a hole first, right through the suit and then, right through you. We'll clear the way as much as we can, but you're going to have to work fast."

"What about The Horde ships?" he asked.

"We'll just have to hope like hell that you'll be too small a target for them to even notice, let alone hit. If we have to, we'll draw their fire."

"Sounds like a plan," he said. "Suit me up."

--------------------------------

"We're in position, sir," Grace said coolly.

"Good," I replied, not liking this one bit but not seeing any other option. "Tommy, how're you doing out there?"

"Are you kidding me? This beats the hell out of water skiing!"

"Game face, Tommy. Report."

"Yes, sir. I'm doing fine, David. The drag is gone and I'm just zooming along in front of the biggest fucking snow ball in the universe. I can sense the water, even from this distance. I should be able to control this thing... somehow."

"What do you intend to do if you can control it?" I asked.

"I've been thinking about that. If I can manage to break it up into smaller, more manageable pieces, I might be able to hurl the damn things back at the Horde fleet. I don't really know, man. I'm kinda surprised that we got this far."

"Roger that, Tommy. Stand by. We've matched velocity with Hoth. We're going to slow down just a fraction so that you can get closer. When we're close enough, just let us know and we'll cut you loose."

"Ready when you are."

"Helm, reduce speed by two percent," I ordered.

Grace tapped a button on her console. "Distance to the surface of Hoth is now one kilometer."

"That's good, but it'd be better if we could halve that distance."

"You heard the man, Grace," I said.

A moment later Leviathan called out. "That's perfect! All right, cut me loose. I'll take it from here."

"Don't forget, Tommy, you don't have the holy trinity looking out for you out there. No Structural Integrity Field, no Inertial Dampeners to keep you safe. If you phase, even for a split-second, you'll be exposed to raw space and dead as soon as you become solid again. There's no oxygen for you to process and we won't be able to beam you back. You'd last as long as you're able to hold your breath. Be careful."

"Sir," the Ops holo-officer called out, "the first tier of Horde ships is beginning to move on our position."