Chapter 27

Excerpt from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal. Year 3, Day 301, Endeavour, Terra Prime

I found more grey in my hair this morning, I'm still young, but it's a timely reminded that I need to get my arse in gear on Project Lazarus.

I can tweak myself manually to find any of the problems that come with getting older, but I'd much rather have an automated process. I'm half tempted to go looking in different universes for a fountain of youth, but honestly? Most of the time it comes with some pretty nasty drawbacks.

Better to work it out myself I think.

On that subject Project Brainiac is still chugging along slowly, having the Kromagg sliding drive has taken pressure off that one, even if we've still got a hell of a lot of work to do on integrating LVIOS' targeting software with it.

Year 3, Day 310, Endeavour, Terra Prime

Alexander was dying of curiosity, only an hour ago a message had been sent out by Mark Clayworth informing him, and every senior officer and advisor in his service, that they were to convene for an emergency meeting. It was a rare event, even more so because it was Clayworth asking for the meeting, no-one doubted what he considered an emergency.

It had taken Alexander almost the full hour to get back from orbit, change out of his armour, and clean himself up so he was presentable; it was amazing the amount of sweat and grime that accumulated inside a sealed environment.

The door to the conference room opened and Clayworth stepped inside, flanked by two of his officers. Alexander once against again considered forcing a promotion on the man, it was just unseemly that a Colour Sergeant was in charge of people ranked Captain, and Major. Then again one thing Alexander had learned from Clayworth in the last few years was knowing how to pick your battles.

Clayworth walked over to his seat, not bothering to sit down, and began speaking, "I'm sorry for abruptness, but once you hear what we've got, you'll understand." the grey haired man indicated to the men beside him, "Captain Natalegawa and Captain Brantholme are two of our intelligence officers and they've been going over the Kromagg database"

Alexander felt his eyebrows raise on their own accord, this could be either very good, or incredibly bad he decided. The haste of the meeting seemed to indicate it was going to be the bad. The number of glances and worried murmurs around the table indicated that the others agreed with him.

Seeing no objections Clayworth motioned to the Asian man just behind him, "Captain Natalegawa, if you please." he said before taking his seat.

Captain Natalegawa cleared his throat, "As you may know, ever since Computer Science decrypted the Kromagg database Lord Alexander retrieved we've been going through it looking for technical information as well as actionable intelligence, earlier today our team came across some disturbing information."

"Given the volume of information involved, and the Alien nature of how it's stored, it was only luck that we found it before it was too late" Captain Brantholme interjected.

"What exactly did you find?" Alexander asked in irritation.

The two Captains exchanged worried looks.

"A full scale invasion plan Sir" Captain Brantholme said.

'Damnit' Alexander thought. "Where?" he demanded.

"Not here" Captain Natalegawa said hurriedly, shooting his colleague a glare. "As far as we can tell, it's a standard human dominated contemporary Earth, no fantastical elements"

"So why are the Kromaggs interested in it?" Viriathus asked, "It's not like there aren't plenty of virgin worlds to choose from"

"We're not sure exactly Sir," Captain Brantholme said, "beyond the standard industrial base, and the large number of slave labourers of course, it doesn't seem to have anything that warrants the numbers the Kromaggs are planning to throw at it"

"That's not exactly true," Captain Natalegawa said, "there were a number of references to something we don't understand, something about 'favourable energy conflux' and 'higher than average stability'"

"Ahh" Alexander said, drawing looks from the rest of the table as he leaned back in his chair, steppling his hands.

"M'lord?" Viriathus asked.

Alexander shook his head, "It's hard to explain, but unlike my own trans-dimensional abilities the Kromagg sliding drives are very limited." Alexander paused for a long moment, looking for a way to explain, "think of the multiverse as a.. err.. massive building. Think of the sliding drive as having a key to every door on the same floor as where you start. Now, with myself think of it as having a master key to the entire building."

Alexander paused again, "Unfortunately the Kromaggs seem to have twigged to a loophole, they've found a room on their floor that has a staircase inside it, allowing them to go to another level of the building, and... well that's bad. Very bad."

Clayworth looked pained as he tried to get his head around the tortured logic of the analogy, "So they've found the trans-dimensional equivalent of a deep water port after being landlocked?"

Alexander considered it for a moment before nodding, "That makes as much sense as anything without going into maths that explodes human heads"

There was a series of chuckles around the room that trailed off awkwardly as they noticed Alexander wasn't laughing.

Matt Campbell cleared his throat and spoke up, "Do you have any details on the invasion itself?"

Captain Brantholme shook his head, "Not as much as we'd like, once we worked out what we were looking at we went straight to CSgt. Clayworth, but we do know that it's a full invasion, the Kromagg colony the database came from was expected to send at least fifty thousand troops, and several wings of Manta craft, and we know from the database that that was one of their smaller colony worlds."

Captain Natalegawa took over, "We also know that the world in question has been infiltrated over the last few years, with Kromagg agents, human agents" The Captain shook his head with disgust, "working under Kromagg control, fomenting unrest."

"How long do we have?" Alexander asked.

"That's the good news, the invasion was set to start a little over a year from now" Natalegawa said.

Alexander leaned back in his chair, "It never rains" he muttered softly, shaking his head, Alexander sat forward, "Okay boys and girls, what do we do?"

***

A few hours later Alexander and his three senior advisors had relocated to his office. The rest of the 'senior staff' had dispersed, either back to their normal duties, or in the case of some of the ESRO people to the military base to help with scouring the Kromagg database.

"I still say it's a bad idea, we simply can't send enough to make a difference, beyond exposing ourselves to the Kromaggs" Matt Campbell said vehemently.

"In other circumstances I'd agree with you, no matter how much it would disgust me to leave a world to the Kromaggs, but we can't let them gain control of a world like that, if they had the ability to" Alexander paused, "err... go 'up' or 'down' instead of just 'side to side' would be incredibly bad"

"How bad?" Clayworth asked.

"Osama bin Laden with the Nuclear Football." Alexander said with finality.

Viriathus, the only one to not get the reference, tried to get the conversation back on track, "What can we do? Best estimates put the initial invasion force in the millions."

"You've got a point" Alexander conceded, "even if I was transiting people every hour of the day, pushing my maximum limits, I'd be able to get maybe a hundred thousand people in place in a year, which is moot anyway, because we don't have that many people" Alexander sighed, "honestly, short of nuking the place into rubble, which for the record I am not willing to do, there is bugger all chance of us effecting the outcome"

"What about warning them?" Matt asked.

"Won't work" Clayworth said, "they've got the place infested with spies and provocateurs, and unless they are really stupid those people won't be on the database."

"Fuck!" Alexander snapped, jumping to his feet, "If only the world wasn't locked, but no, I didn't think when I was running, and now billions are going to die"

"Alex, it's not your fault" Clayworth said, standing up and putting his hand on Alexander's shoulder.

"I know... I know" Alexander said, "I just don't know what we're suppose to do"

"How long ago did they start infiltrating their target?" Viriathus asked, his face pensive.

Clayworth turned to face the younger man, "About six or seven years ago according to the database, why?"

"And were they replacing people or just slotting their own in?" Viriathus ignored the soldier's question.

Clayworth blinked and suddenly smiled, "I see where you're going lad"

Alexander glanced between his advisors, "Someone care to share?"