James P Hogan. Giant’s Star. Giant Series #3

That left the enemy headquarters planet of Jevlen together with its system of allied worlds, which were serviced by JEVEX and not by vis&a. This, it turned out, was going to be a far harder nut to crack since it was unassailable by simply sending in ships as Hunt had thought of doing earlier.

The problem was that Jevlen was light-years away from Gistar, and the only way of getting ships there was through black-hole toroids projected by VISAR. But when VISAR attempted to project a few test beams into .r~v~x’s operating zone, it found that JEVEX was able to disrupt the beams easily; evidently the Jevlenese had been planning to break from Thurien for some time. Neither was it feasible for VISAR to transfer ships through toroids projected to just beyond the fringe of JEVEX’s effective jamming radius to make their own way to Jevien from there. The problem in this case was

that all the Thurien vessels relied on power, as well as navigational and control signals, beamed through the Thurien h-grid from centralized generating and supervisory centers, and JEVEX could disrupt those beams just as easily. In other words, nothing could get into the Jevlenese system as long as JEVEX was operating, and the only way to stop it from operating was to send something in. It was a deadlock.

More serious was the possibility that the Jevlenese might have been amassing weapons secretly for a long time, and, in anticipation of exactly the kind of situation that now existed, building vessels to transport them that operated with self-contained propulsion and control capability. If so, they would be in a position to move their forces with impunity into YISAR-controlled regions and proceed unopposed with whatever threats or actions they had been planning. Time was crucial. The events at Thurios had clearly forced the Jevlenese to make their break sooner than they had intended, and the more swiftly the Thuriens reacted, the better the chances would be of catching the Jevlenese at a disadvantage with their preparations incomplete. But what kind of reaction was possible from a race that had no experience of resisting an armed opponent, possessed no weaponry to react with even if they had, and couldn’t get near their opponent anyway? Nobody had any solution to offer until a day after the confrontation in Thurios, when Garuth, Shilohin, and Eesyan requested a private audience with Calazar.

“No disrespect, but your experts are missing the obvious,” Garuth said. “They’ve taken advanced Thurien technology for granted for so long that they can’t think in any other terms.”

Calazar raised his hands protectively. “Calm down, stop waving your arms about, and tell me what you’re trying to say,” he suggested.

“The way to get in at Jevlen is in orbit over Thurien right now,” Shilohin said. “The Shapieron. It might be obsolete by your standards, but it’s got its own on-board power, and zo~c flies it perfectly well without any need for anybody’s h-grid.”

For a few seconds Calazar stared mutely back at them in astonishinent. What they had said was true-none of the scientists who had been debating the problem without a break since JEVEX had severed its connections had even considered the Shapieron. It

seemed so obvious that Calazar was convinced there had to be a flaw. He looked questioningly at Eesyan.

“I can’t see why not,” Eesyan said. “As Shilohin says, there’s no way JEVEX could stop it.”

There was something deeper behind this proposal, Calazar sensed as he searched Garuth’s face. What was equally obvious, and had not been said, was that even if JEVEX could not prevent the Shapieron from physically entering its operating zone, it might well have plenty of other means at its disposal for stopping the ship once it got in there. Garuth had been itching to confront the Jevlenese yesterday, and had been frustrated at the last moment. Was he now ready to risk himself, his crew, and his ship in recklessly settling something that he saw as a personal vendetta against Broghuilio? Calazar could not permit that. “The Shapieron would still be detected,” he pointed out. “The Jevlenese will have sensors and scanners all over their star system. You could be walking into anything. A ship on its own, isolated from any communications with Thurien, with no defensive equipment of any kind? . . .” He let the sentence hang and allowed his expression to say the rest.

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