The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [101]
There was suddenly a clang! from somewhere down the row, and then there came the hollow sound of footsteps. Someone was coming. Although he had no timepiece, Hek knew it was too early for the next meal. Someone was actually coming to see him—or space him.
It was Drappa Fuel Filter Examiner, Leader of the North Nation and the new Presider. “Hello, Hek,” he said in that dull, grating voice of his.
“Greetings, Drappa. Congratulations, I think.”
“You’re in no position to make jokes.” Drappa thumbed open the door of the cell and entered. “Mind if I sit down?” he asked, throwing himself onto Hek’s bunk. “I have a proposition for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“The Fleet Congress has tentatively decided that our people will settle on the fourth planet of this system and that we’ll dismantle the Fleet. We’re going to make that proposal at the next round of the Federation talks, and we’re sure it will be accepted. It’ll certainly make the Federation happy.”
Hek was shocked. “Why? It flies in the face of all that we are!”
“Because the population wants it that way,” Drappa told him. “Many of our people believe the days of the Fleet are over because we’ll soon get warp drive for ourselves, now that we’ve been given the hint that it exists. Faster-than-light travel will make our present ships obsolete, certainly, but that hardly matters.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not to most of our people. We’re being granted a pristine world of our own, a new Ma’ak Krannag, and they want to live there. Only a few of our people want to remain spaceside and live the way we’ve been living all these centuries, always free, but those few represent enough people to fill perhaps fifty of our larger ships. And there’s something else, too.”
“What is it?”
“These peace talks may not succeed, Hek. Everything seems fine now, but war could still break out between us and the Lethanta. Millennia of hatred and suspicion do not evaporate away into vacuum just because a doctor sees something odd through her microscope. And there’s another thing, too. Even if the talks are successful, war could still come a century or two from now. It happened just that way once, long ago, back in our native star system. It could happen here as well.”
“I can certainly see that. And if it does—?”
“If it does,” Drappa said, “I don’t want any of the Lethanta to escape our vengeance, to mock us by their continued existence, should we become extinct. Hek, I’ve learned something. Something vital. When our Fleet was first detected coming in, the Lethanta went back into space, back to where they’d left their asteroid ships thousands of years before, and they recovered and refurbished them. They packed the asteroid ships full of volunteers and supplies, and they sent them on their way again. That’s why they called this star The Last Stand, Hek. This is where they were going to sacrifice themselves and destroy us in order to protect the small group of their own people they’d sent farther on.”
“Which way did they go?”
“I don’t know,” said Drappa. “The asteroids are shielded against our sensor probes—and the Federation’s, too, for that matter. The asteroids could have gone off in any direction and at any acceleration. For security reasons, their destination wasn’t to be selected until they were out of this star system. The asteroid ships could have remained together or split into several flights headed in different directions, and they have been on their way for decades. They’ll never be found except by the sheerest accident while in flight. Now, Hek. How would you like to be the commander of a Seventh Fleet, a new Fleet, dedicated to finding and dealing with these escaped Lethanta when they finally do arrive at their destination?”
“A Seventh Fleet?”
“Yes. Your mission would be the same as that of our beloved forefathers of the First Fleet—find the Lethanta. The job won’t be completed within your lifetime, no—but it would be a job that would last for the rest of your life.