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.
"Shall I try to contact them?" asked the young com officer pitifully.
But at that moment the Russians started forward.
But at that moment something else occurred as well. A patch of silvery
sheen became visible at a distance to the Commonwealth right, almost at
a direct line between the armies from the broken and still
dark-smoldering gate upon their left. The advancing Soviet forces came
to a halt, confused. But Hayes became suddenly calm, and a vengeful
smile played about the corners of his mouth. But he must play this new
card correctly.
"What is it?" asked a voice. And even as the words were spoken a
fourth Goliath appeared, for an instant gleaming white, then graying
once more as it passed through the pierced screen of silver. Hayes was
not the only one with a star gate. The American Seventh Fleet,
entombed within the carrier Eisenhower, was at hand.
Quickly taking stock of the situation, Commanding Admiral Robeson moved
to join the re-heartened Third, attempted to make contact with both
parties, and reluctantly, since he did not know how things would turn,
began to discharge and align his own forces. The parallel planes still
existed, only now they were closer and more equal, a colossal gathering
of some fourteen hundred ships, prepared for a confrontation that even
the mythic battles of the Bhagavad-Gita could not match.
And this was no fable of gods and clouds and chariots, decrying the
illusions of the physical world, but hard and deadly reality. And if
the two sides of fire-breathing metal, like ghastly cymbals of Death,
were brought together with a crash, the awful sound would shatter the
uneasy stillness and continue to be heard, would ripple far, far in all
directions, and the peace that good men prayed for would be lost.
Hayes would have his Great War, after all.
"General Hayes," said the Dreadnought com officer. "Admiral Robeson is
requesting to speak with Admiral Frank."
"Cut him off," was Hayes' dispassionate reply.
"WHAT?" cried Frank hotly. "Why shouldn't I speak to him?"
Again the general's voice was calm. "It's some trick of the Soviets'.
John Robeson no longer commands the Seventh Fleet."
"But sir," began the com officer. "He's on the coded frequency, and
the voice match---"
"I SAID, cut him off."
.....
And then Frank did it. He uttered the simple (and often just) word
that no subordinate, any time, anywhere, in any army of men, is ever
allowed to speak.
"No."
"What the hell do you mean, NO!" And suddenly all Hayes' former fury
returned. His face distorted wildly, and the veins of his skull and
neck stood out further still.
"I've known John Robeson for thirty years. There's no way he would do
anything..... It's YOU I don't trust. No more running. No more
hiding from the truth." He turned to the terrified young man, whose
eyes moved back and forth between them. "Soldier, open that channel."
"You, traitorous, DOG!" screamed Hayes, and began to rush at him,
heedless.
But all at once he stopped, and stood perfectly still. His right
eyebrow twitched strangely, and the whole face began to work in comic
spasms.
He collapsed to the floor, where Calder caught him up, and rested the
beloved head on his knee. The general's trembling jaw uttered sounds
but could not, as it struggled so desperately to do, create
intelligible speech. Charles William Hayes had suffered a massive
stroke, and lay dying in his soldier's arms.
"Get a doctor in here, quickly," ordered Frank, once again his own
master. Then turning to the com-man, "Put Robeson on visual, apprise
him of our status, and tell him I'll be with him as soon as I can."
At that moment the only son of William and Charlotte Hayes gave up his
spirit, trying to tell his only friend that he loved him.
"You can't....." blubbered Calder. "No, please, no." Their foreheads
met, and he wept.
Frank approached him, and put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "I'm
sorry, Michael. I truly am. But he would have led us all to ruin."
"You!" shocked Calder through his tears. "YOU killed him..... He was
going to save us!" And in a sudden fury of determination like that of
his dead idol, he seized the pistol and Hayes' hip. And as the other
moved away, waving NO with his hands in front of him, shot Frank in the
chest and killed him.
Calder lowered his master's body gently. Then rising, holding the
weapon still, looked about him and brandished it fiercely. His second
shot destroyed the motor-drive to the bridge's double doors, sealing
them shut. After another threatening wave at the benumbed circle of
men, he turned to the astonished face of Robeson on the screen.
"Calder, what in God's name?"
But the man's senses were gone. All that remained were hatred and
death, wrenched forward through bitter tears.
"You, NIGGER!" The word was terrible to hear. "You killed him too!"
And he shot the screen as well.
"Now listen to me, all of you! We're going to fight those red bastards
if we have to do it alone. Move the ship forward, battle speed One!"
He aimed the pistol at the hesitating officer, who feeling himself cast
into Hell, obeyed.
*
What the Soviet commanders aboard the carriers Lenin and Brezhnev
heard, was Robeson telling them that Hayes was dead and the bridge of
the Dreadnought in chaos---imploring them not to begin what couldn't
later be stopped, and might lead to galactic holocaust. But what they
saw was the prow of the behemoth coming towards them and starting to
fire. Their instructions had been to eliminate Hayes, and if
necessary, the entire Third Fleet.
The Dreadnought continued to move forward; it was nearly at the
midpoint between two armies. And now the Eisenhower moved forward as
well. That this was caused by Robeson putting a tractor beam on his
ship's counterpart, and trying unsuccessfully to check its advance they
could not know, because they had stopped listening. And so, very
naturally, they began to fire back.
But then a very different kind of 'miracle' occurred.
From out of the rent and improperly sealed Gate on the Commonwealth
left, and from the outlet of the distant Gate to their right, whose
silvery sheet now fluttered as in a haunted breeze, the horrible black
anti-matter of Nothingness began to seep out like an inky cloud.
Perhaps drawn each to the other, perhaps triggered by the living metal
that now stood equidistant between them, like ill-shaped hands it oozed
slowly together, a darkness that would envelope the stars.
And with it came a sound: a silence so awful, a death so complete and
eternal, that Time itself seemed to ripple like a black wave between
the two armies.
Instinctively they drew back, unnerved and unhinged. But the
Dreadnought remained perfectly still, immobilized, while the hands of
Unmaking drew nearer.....
And then they met. The solid-huge metal of that once proud and
fearless sword, swayed in layers of impossible fluidity, faded, and was
gone.
The Hands joined and began to pull together their distant shoulders.
The armies fled, and no more death (by them) could be wrought.
From out of somewhere brilliant white globes began to appear, and to
fence off the Darkness with glittering webs.
............................................................