others.” He stooped lower as his voice dropped an octave. “Events stir on the border. Jade League members recall old feuds. There is a time of troubles approaching.”
As I stood there with him, I didn’t detect any duplicity in Sant. I found myself marveling at Ella’s skill with the Jelk mind machine.
“Are you well?” Sant asked later, as I made ready to leave.
“Yes, fine,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem tense. I hope it isn’t anything I’ve said or done.”
“Don’t worry, Doctor. I’ve had…things on my mind lately.”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t we all?”
An hour later I headed for my ship, little knowing that nothing was going to be the same again.
***
Three days later, I sipped black coffee on the bridge of the Aristotle . The crew sat on tall seats so they could reach their control panels. The ship had been built to tiger-scale, but it was ours now.
I sat in the center with the other consoles facing inward toward me. That way, the personnel could see exactly what I did or said at all times. It was the Lokhar method, not ours, but we had to live with it. Before me on the bulkhead was the main viewing screen.
From the outside, our cruiser looked like a wedged-shaped slice of pie. The bridge was inside the back third area, buried under many decks and protected by the outer armor. The vessel was fast, boasting a heavy electromagnetic shield in front and a weaker one in back—tigers didn’t believe in running away. For main armaments, we had medium-strength laser cannons. This was a shoot and scoot vessel, not a big toe-to-toe fighter like the battlejumper we’d once stolen from Shah Claath.
On the view screen in space gleamed the giant, donut-shaped Forerunner artifact that we guardians supposedly protected.
I took another sip, savoring my coffee.
“Commander,” Ella said from her station. “The beacon near Neptune is reporting.”
“Yes,” I said.
Ella studied her board before her head snapped back up. “I’m detecting starships, over twenty of them, so far. More are coming through the jump gate every minute.”
I put the cup into its holder, sitting up. “Put it on the main screen,” I said. I had to work to keep the bite out of my voice. Twenty starships—I didn’t like the sound of that. The next automated factory wasn’t due for another three months.
Ella complied, and I found myself looking at shark-shaped vessels of varying dimensions. The gate shimmered yellow. Blue Neptune hung up at the corner about fifty thousand kilometers from the gate. The yellow intensified as another Great White-shaped vessel slid through. According to the scale symbol on the edge of the screen, some of the ships were bigger than several city blocks. The big ones looked to be larger than Manhattan Island.
“Those must be Starkiens,” I said.
“I agree,” Ella replied.
We’d had our share of run-ins with the Starkiens. In size, shape and disposition, they were baboon-like aliens. They were private contractors without any planetary abode to call home. They roved the star lanes, practicing piracy wherever they could get away with it. As a rule, the other races sneered at the Starkiens, driving them away as squatters. We didn’t have the hardware to sneer.
I wondered what they doing in the solar system.
“I count thirty vessels now,” Ella said.
The shark-shaped vessels kept pouring through the yellow jump gate. That was the main way the aliens moved between star systems. Long ago, the First Ones had laid down jump lanes. How they did this, no one knew. The stellar maze was like a giant connect-the-dots puzzle with various lanes linking different star systems. Some believed the Forerunners had used the artifacts to make the routes.
“Make it forty-five ships now,” Ella said.
“Have they tried to hail us yet?” I asked.
Ella shook her head.
Neptune was light-hours away from us, making two-way talking difficult. We’d get a message hours after a Starkien
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