Alpha One - Chris Burton [116]
Chapter Fifty
The Message
Admiral Shenke sat on one of the relaxation chairs in his state room. He listened to the communication from Professor Nigel Winterburn for the umpteenth time, and still couldn’t believe what he heard. Winterburn gave a detailed explanation of his subterfuge, who he was, and why he went to such extraordinary lengths to achieve his objectives.
If what he said was to be believed, Winterburn deceived Alpha into providing an open door to the Galaxy for his people, the Kryl, and if that weren’t bad enough, the Kryl were about to use the Galaxy as their new feeding ground.
Shenke remained cynical. At this stage it was pure conjecture, but there were some alarming aspects to the whole situation which supported Winterburn’s assertions. For a start, why did so many private vessels follow Winterburn through the blue wormhole? Winterburn’s connection to Nexus had been verified, and the Sect had preached for hundreds of years about the danger of opening the two wormholes together.
Now was hardly the time for reflection. He needed to keep this thing local. He must ensure Winterburn’s message didn’t get out. Which wouldn’t be easy; for starters, Winterburn broadcast across multiple channel links. That meant some of his crew, many of the journalists, Cameron and the other Nexus scientists and any else who could receive the transmission this far out in deep space heard his message. It would be difficult to keep a lid on this.
Shenke ordered a transmission blocker to be set up as soon as the message was first broadcast. This was powerful enough to stop anyone broadcasting to outside the Tri-Star region for the foreseeable future. It also collated together any transmissions sent and bounced them back to Shenke’s command center where the transmission data could be analyzed and blocked or released depending on the content. This was not exactly unusual in a war zone. Right now it was critical.
Cameron was in contact and demanded a meeting at the highest level to discuss the options available. Shenke put him off initially, but needed Cameron on his side so he agreed to a meeting later that evening.
He needed to turn his attention to the potential military threat posed by the Kryl. He must keep Alpha’s options open by exploring all eventualities, with the obvious solution being to render the blue wormhole defunct and prevent the Kryl from entering the Galaxy in the first place. There was the matter of the Halo 7 and the other vessels which accompanied the AUSWAS ship into the void. If he must destroy the hole, their escape route back to this galaxy would be gone.
Shenke’ s lead advisor, Commander Chris Willis, had served aboard the Illustrious under Admiral Shenke’s command for the past five years and, before that, the two men’s careers intertwined as they each rose through the ranks. Willis supervised the repairs to the ship following the Sect’s unprovoked attack. He entered the Admiral’s state rooms with confirmation that all essential repairs were completed and the ship was once again in full battle readiness.
“So, what do we do Chris—your expert opinion, please?”
“I think we should engage the assistance of the Sect. After all, they want the damn hole closed, too. We need to speak to the Admiralty bench and possibly Admiral Rose too. He must be near to victory with the Sentinels.”
“I have not heard from Rose for a few days. Send a jump ship out of the communication jamming area and get a status update from Rose’s fleet. We also need to communicate with Earth. I will draft a coded message to Koenig, and we will need to send an Eagle back to Alpha One. We need