The Beagle and three gunships emerged from hyperspace into the D5 system. It had been one of the older colonial systems, first discovered by Dr. Ruff while on an exploratory mission. Of particular interest was the arid world called Ruff's World—by a panel of scientists, not by Dr. Ruff himself, who had thought it a foolish name—that had become the first colony established outside the Bloc's main planetary system.
Ruff's World was nothing more than a smoldering memory now. Its cities had been leveled by Black Ship weapons. Though an android, Dr. Ruff was capable of emotions and in this case felt terribly depressed that he had indirectly caused the planet named for him to be destroyed along with its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
Though Nina Barker had not said anything, Dr. Ruff knew enough about his systems to know he had given information to whoever was controlling the Black Ships. That information concerned blueprints of his own cybernetic body as well as the details for every starship in the Bloc fleet. This information had been used to create the Black Ships and their warriors.
Not since his family had died had Dr. Ruff felt so melancholy. He also felt a terrible yearning for revenge. He wanted to find this fourth Creator to tear him or her limb from limb in retribution for using him as a pawn. But he couldn't. Instead, he was indirectly serving that purpose by taking the Beagle to the D5 system. Since the enemy had already accessed his brain once, he was far too much of a liability to include in the rest of the plan. The less he knew, the better at this point.
Sitting in the command chair of his ship, he waited for the telltale signal of other ships dropping out of hyperspace. This didn't take long, a mere five minutes and forty-seven seconds after the Beagle arrived, a fleet of fifty Black Ships appeared. It was far more than enough firepower to destroy the Beagle and the three lightly-armed gunships.
He tapped a few commands on his computer terminal to command the gunships to execute a series of attack maneuvers. Dr. Ruff was the only crewmember on any of the four ships so as not to risk any more lives in the diversion. The Black Ships easily countered these maneuvers, crippling the gunships by destroying their engines.
Clearly the enemy wanted more captives. What they wanted these for Dr. Ruff did not know. He would not give himself the chance to find out. The fifty Black Ships surrounded the Beagle, their weapons ready to obliterate him if he tried anything. But they couldn't prevent him in time from triggering an overload of the science ship's engine core.
As an explosion tore through the Beagle, Dr. Ruff sat rigidly in his chair. He had already died once before. He knew what to expect.
#
The meeting was hastily assembled. The Cerberus had more than enough empty space to accommodate the fleet commanders, as well as Spot II, Will, and Tom. They sat on folding chairs, crates, and anything else they could find in an empty cargo hold. Using a portable holographic projector, Buster pointed to a tiny white planet.
"This is where we're going. There's no official name for it. On our charts it's called Planet XX77. For operational purposes we have codenamed it Snowball," Buster said. He chomped on a cold cigar as he surveyed the room before he continued. "As you might have guessed, Snowball is an ice planet. Our initial probes in the area never detected any life. We don't have time at this point for another sweep so, excuse the pun, we're going in cold.
"We have no idea what to expect when we arrive. Our hope is that Dr. Ruff's diversion will have drawn a large contingent of their ships away. Despite that, we are still likely to face massive resistance. There's a good chance none of us will come back from this.
"But from what you've seen from the mining station, it should be clear that we must strike and strike hard. These Black Ships are not merely trying to destroy us, they are trying to steal our souls."
There was mumbled agreement to this. The other commanders had all seen footage of what had happened to Vern and the others. For the moment Nina Barker had freed Vern and taken him to a lab aboard the Cerberus for further study. Vern could still only squeak; Nina was trying to come up with a translation program so they could find out what he knew. No one—bulldog, mutt, or raccoon—objected to launching a counterattack against Snowball as quickly as possible.
Buster turned the briefing over to his brother Jonathan, who briefed the commanders on the Bloc fleet's strength and projected assignments. The Cerberus would lead the way, using its untested main gun to get as many Black Ships as possible before the rest of the fleet moved in. Spot IV's commando team would try to infiltrate the Black Ship headquarters to rescue Whiskers, Jessie, and any other captives.
As Will listened to this, he knew once more he and Tom would be asked to sit it out, to leave the real fighting to their creations. He didn't like this, but there was little he could do to argue with it. He didn't have any training for fighting on the ground or in space. What had happened to Jessie served as enough notice of what could happen if he tried to involve himself in the battle.
It made him wonder why he, Tom, and Jessie had come here. If they were so useless, why had Ricky and Heather come to fetch them? Couldn't all of this have happened without the supposed Creators?
He looked over at his brother, who sat ramrod straight in his chair, staring at Snowball. Will could imagine his brother was staring at the planet, trying to imagine where Jessie was being held.
#
Throughout the two days it took to reach the Snowball system, Will had little to do. He spent much of his time in Nina's lab, trying to help her in finding a way to help Vern Raccoon. The little stuffed raccoon could still only manage a few squeaks in answer to any questions posed to him. "Maybe for now we should stick to asking yes or no questions," Will said. He turned to way Vern lay on a worktable. "Squeak once for yes and twice for no, all right?"
The stuffed raccoon squeaked once. "Were you captured on the mining station?"
Vern squeaked twice to indicate no. "You were somewhere else?" One squeak. "On a colony?" Two squeaks. "On a ship?" One squeak. "And the Black Ships boarded it?" One squeak. "They took you captive?" One squeak. "Just you?" Two squeaks. "They took others too?" One squeak. "Were all of those on the mining station?" Two squeaks. "They took some of them somewhere else?" One squeak. "To their headquarters?" Vern managed to shrug his shoulders to indicate he didn't know.
"Well, that's a start," Will said to Nina. He was about to ask more questions, when an idea occurred to him. "Do you guys use something like Morse code?"
Nina nodded to him, seeing where he was going with this. "We do have some old forms of codes that rely on sounds," she said. "I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."
They spent a few hours then refreshing Vern's memory on the Bloc's version of Morse code. Once this was done, the conversations became easier, though it took Vern forever to form the simplest sentences using the technique. What they found out, though, was worth the effort.
Vern and his mother Laura Raccoon had been on one of the ships defending Ruff's World from attack. As happened on the Beagle, Black Ship landing craft attached themselves to Vern's ship and boarded in force. They took Vern, Laura, and the rest of the bridge crew captive. On one of the Black Ship vessels they were split up. Vern and some of the others were sent to the mining facility while Laura and others were sent somewhere else. As he had indicated before, Vern didn't know where his mother had been taken.
At the mining station, he and the other captives had been exposed to gruesome experiments. This largely involved them being isolated in a clear tube and then bombarded with some kind of radiation. Vern had watched as some of his comrades had become partial stuffed animals. Those who survived this torment, usually died not long after thanks to Jake Bulldog.
Vern had been the last to undergo the experiment. The Black Ship leader had been getting closer and closer, each time getting more of the organic matter to become fabric. "You will be my great success," the Black Ship leader had said.
Vern tried to resist, but the Black Ship guards wrestled him into the tube. It filled with purple light, filling Vern with pain. He blacked out only to wake up much later in his present state. For whatever reason the Black Ship leader had filled the tube with a purple solution, what Nina had determined was a sort of medicinal solution. Vern didn't get a chance to ask, finding himself unable to move or speak when he came to. He could only watch as the Black Ship leader said, "My work here is complete. Now is time for the next phase."
That was the last Vern had seen of the Black Ship leader or his troops. He had spent days alone, catching glimpses of Jake Bulldog, who thought Vern was already dead. After all those days by himself, Vern had managed to achieve basic locomotion and to squeak. Then Spot IV's team had arrived to rescue him.
"They're going to use it on other captives," Will said. He thought instantly of Jessie. He could only hope that she could somehow resist it. What would happen then? Would the Black Ship leader have her executed? In either case, they had to hurry to rescue her.
When Vern's story was presented to the rest of the Cerberus' command staff, Buster nearly exploded. "The bastards! We can't let them do this to Whiskers."
"Or Jessie," Tom said.
"I think the question is why they're doing it," Spot II said. "They've wasted a lot of time and effort to achieve something of little military value. It would be simpler for them to kill us."
"Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth," Will said. "This has given us the opportunity to find their base and maybe save our friends."
"Yes, you're right," Spot II said. "I just wish I understood what they wanted."
"We'll ask the son of a bitch once we capture him," Buster said. Other heads bobbed in agreement.
That would be more difficult than any of them had hoped. The Cerberus dropped out of hyperspace in the Snowball system to find while Dr. Ruff's diversion had drawn some of the Black Ship fleet away, what remained still outnumbered the Bloc fleet by at least seven-to-one. Worse news came from long-range sensor reports. "No sign of any buildings on the surface of the planet," Zeke said. He was substituting for Amanda Bulldog, who had shipped over to the Bulldog to be with her father as he recovered.
"We'll have to send a team down to the surface to investigate," Buster said.
Spot II pushed a button on his console to relay instructions to his son. As he did so, Will noticed his brother sneak out of the compartment. "Oh no," he said to himself, thinking of Jessie. He ran after Tom, finally catching up with him in the hangar. He leapt in a flying tackle, managing to grab Tom's left ankle.
"What are you doing?" Tom said.
"You can't go down there. Don't you remember what happened to Jessie?"
"She's why we have to go down there."
"We'll only get in the way. We aren't soldiers."
"I don't care. I'm not going to leave it up to strangers to find her."
"Tom—"
"I'm going down there. You can either come with me or I can knock you out."
The look in Tom's eyes indicated he would have no qualms about punching his brother to keep Will from giving him away. "All right, I'll come with you. To make sure you don't get into too much trouble."
Tom tousled Will's hair. "Me, trouble? Come on."
The commando team had not arrived yet, giving Tom and Will the opportunity to find a hiding place on the landing craft. They emptied out a locker filled with survival gear to squeeze inside. It was a tight fit and Will worried how much protection they would have from heat, radiation, and G-forces, but he knew better than to argue. Besides, he wanted to rescue Jessie as badly as Tom did.
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