Badlands

by Randal Sloan

  Stepping into the silence, Troy presented a set of proposed actions for them to take. The council was so shaken up, no one was willing to oppose him. They knew without a doubt that changes were needed. Most recognized that even those actions would not be enough if the ones fighting for them were not successful.

  #

  Admiral Janson had his own plans in the works. The day after arriving at Sigmus Station, he had his meetings with the rebel council, which as far as he was concerned was a waste of time. All they could talk about was getting another squadron together with their existing fleet of ships, including another of those huge monitor ships they were building with the aliens' help. By the time they got the squadron together, Janson knew he would already have his new ship, so he finally told them to just do whatever they wanted to do. They could just leave him out of it.

  Returning to the ship, he now knew he was on his own, which just suited him fine. It would be easier doing it without them anyway. Of course, not all his plans were working out. When he learned about Mad Dog and his failure, at first he was angry. What an idiot! But really he blamed himself. A man that hires a fool is a bigger fool! I should let the deal with the girl go, but she had the nerve to defy me. Even if I'm leaving here soon, I just can't allow that to stand.

  Slowly his plan came together. I'm going to need that fool one more time, but this way I can take care of him, the girl, the Captain and the XO, all at the same time.

  Once more making an implant call to Mad Dog, he was surprised to find the man slow to answer. Still in the infirmary, it appeared Mad Dog was suddenly worried about any attention on him.

  "If I didn't need you," the Admiral said. "I'd anonymously allow certain information about you to be discovered."

  For the first time in days, Mad Dog smiled. "Then certain information about you would come to light. Such as your destination on your last shuttle flight and who you met with."

  He let that sink in a moment. "And don't think you can have me killed and get away with it. It's set up so it will be automatically sent out if anything happens to me."

  That made Admiral Janson quite angry, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. It wouldn't matter soon, as he expected the problem to go away when he destroyed the Relentless. So he just nodded his understanding.

  "Mutual destruction can be a good deterrent," was all he said, frowning at the man. "Look, I'm going to need a shuttle in a few days and then you can go about your business."

  Mad Dog shook his head. "Not sure I can help you. There's nothing in it for me that's worth the risk with all the increased scrutiny on me right now."

  "What if I throw in the girl? The one who seems to be plaguing you. When I get to my destination, the two of you can have the shuttle all to yourselves."

  Mad Dog stared a moment. He was almost afraid to get near her again, but that was just too good an offer to pass up. He did want revenge, an emotion that now burned fiercely within him. It was tempered by his fear of her now, but surely in a shuttle alone, she couldn't hurt him.

  "Fine," he replied. "As long as you don't expect her back alive."

  The Admiral knew he had him now. It wasn't like he cared one way or the other. Soon they'd all be dead when he destroyed the ship. "You can do whatever you want to her. Just get me that shuttle and we'll be in business."

  He smiled. "I'll even pay you double."

  Mad Dog smiled back. "The girl and the money up front and it's a deal."

  The Admiral had hoped he wouldn't think of that. After the ship was destroyed, he wouldn't have needed to pay. But that didn't matter in the long run. It would be a tiny drop in the huge bucket he expected to be bringing in soon.

  "Deal!" he said, "This is what I need you to do..."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Badlands

  Sasha sat in front of the control station staring at the view in front of her. As Jarra had said, one had to see it in person to fully appreciate just how wonderful and yet frightening it was. For the moment she was looking at the normal scan that went up to the gamma level, and it looked much as the view Jarra had shown them. Yet what the 3D VR she'd shown them hadn't made evident was the vastness of the area or the fact that it all was constantly changing even as she watched.

  This was obviously one of those moments Jarra had warned her about. She looked out over that vast area in front of her and it was almost more than she could handle. She had her job to do and the team was depending on her. But it all was so terrifying. It was just so big and those energy streams were even more ferocious when viewed up close than they'd appeared before. How could they possibly survive that?

  Remembering the history of the place, Sasha was amazed at the crews of those ships that had attempted to explore the area. Very brave but very foolish. She hoped her ship's crew wasn't being foolish too.

  Yet even Sasha could see that the Princess was right. Everything was leading them to this area for some final showdown. She just hoped they could pull it off again. It all looked so impossible. She realized she was shaking with her fear, something she quickly reeled in. She hadn't been this frightened since those two men had accosted her on the frigate. That seemed a long time ago now, but she knew it had only been a few weeks ago.

  Get it together, girl. Your Princess is depending on you. Sasha took a deep breath. She would not let her Princess down! Looking around quickly, Sasha was glad that no one seemed to have seen her moment of fear. They all seemed to be quite busy.

  Galen for the moment was ignoring the view. He was busy making notes in his navigation log of their trip from Sigmus Station to the Badlands. The log was a new idea of Galen's and Sasha liked it. If they ever had to make the same trip, the log would allow lessons learned to be applied. In this case, Galen had managed to shave three days off the otherwise ten day trip. Sasha knew the Relentless should have remained at the station for another day and she expected the two navigators, along with the promised help Jarra claimed she would get from the XO, to add two days to their trip.

  All of that led Sasha to believe they would have five to six days to work with. They had that long to get their planned technological enhancements tested and completed. As the rest of the team did their part to get ready for their first test, Sasha worried about her Princess. Somehow, Jarra was making intuitive leaps that crossed outside of the patterns that Sasha could see. That whole business of letting that Mad Dog man free made absolutely no sense to her. Jarra's explanation that it was somehow necessary didn't seem logical.

  Yet Sasha believed in and loved her Princess; she would do anything for her. That meant she had to trust her on this. She just hoped it wouldn't backfire and get her friend hurt.

  She smiled as she thought of the last days they'd spent on Sigmus Station. It was obvious that Jarra and Jason were both smitten with each other and the two had spent a lot of time together, although the girls had gone off the next morning to spend time together too. Jarra even took them shopping. That had been a lot of fun, something Sasha had seldom taken the time to do herself.

  Sasha's thoughts were interrupted as Gabo pinged in. "Ready to test the higher level scan," he said. He had been working on the sensors since they had arrived back here at the Badlands. It appeared he was ready to test it all out.

  When Sasha acknowledged, he initiated the scan. Sasha watched in awe as the view changed. It looked much more like a normal view of hyperspace except the energy levels seemed much higher. As she watched, Gabo made changes to the display so that the rogue planets and moons appeared as grey indistinct shapes.

  "I've shaded the rogues in so you can see them, but as we expected, they don't propagate above the gamma level. We still have to avoid them if we drop back to the gamma level at any time, so the safest course is to avoid them if at all possible.

  Sasha noticed that Galen had stopped working on his log and was staring in amazement at the display in front of them. "If we get our new hyperspace engines to work to those energy levels, we should be able to navigate more or l
ess normally," he told her. "Normal for hyperspace, that is."

  Sasha nodded. "Good. Everyone, take a few moments. As soon as you're ready, we'll do a short test of a few seconds duration. Make sure you set our course to run parallel to the area. I don't want to get stranded in the middle of one of those energy streams."

  "You and me both," Galen told her. "Don't worry. I'll be very careful."

  #

  Everyone pinged her as soon as they were ready for the test. Even Sara stopped her work to watch. When the last ping came in, Sasha signaled a nervous go. Luckily, implant communication did not transmit emotions very well, or she'd have been caught out.

  In their first test, they were going to try the new hyperspace frequencies for only a very few seconds. Galen touched the button on the hyper drive and held it there for several seconds. Just for a moment, the whole universe felt really strange, as if something just wasn't quite right. The feeling persisted but at least it got easier to handle. Galen released the button and finally everything seemed to come back to normal. As the test ended, the lights flickered for several seconds while Gabo worked furiously at his station. Finally Gabo got it under control.

  "Sorry about that," Galen said. "It looks like we missed the last transition frequency by a tiny amount. That put us into some kind of oscillation. Looks like you got it dampened out, Gabo."

  "Yeah, but I would prefer to avoid that in the future..." Gabo's voice trailed off as he looked at his sensors.

  "You're not going to believe it, guys," he said as he flashed up their location. Somehow, in those few seconds, they had traveled the distance that normally would have taken them nearly a minute.

  Everyone stared at each other. Finally, Sasha asked the question that no one else would. "Isn't that a bit more than we expected, guys?"

  Gabo answered her. "Yes, I think we went right past the delta level and hit either epsilon or maybe even zeta. That odd feeling we experienced I believe was due to the transition to the zeta level. Not sure why yet."

  Sasha looked at Galen. "So, can you repeat this without the oscillation? And Gabo, can our systems handle it?"

  Both guys answered almost at the same time. "I think so."

  "That's not good enough. I'm as much amazed at the distance we just traveled as you are, but until we can do it without risk, it's not worth it. What if the oscillations are much worse the next time and it crashes our systems or worse, causes a catastrophic failure? There's only us and our one ship. Testing is on hold until you come back with either a yes or no. If it's a yes, I'll let you try a thirty second run."

  The guys didn't like it, but they both knew she was right. Sasha didn't tell them that Jarra had specifically warned her about them.

  #

  A couple of hours passed with Galen and Gabo working furiously at their stations, occasionally pulling Sara in for a consult. Sasha had nothing to do but to stay out of their way, but she was watching. When Galen had what she would call an Ah ha! moment, she saw it. With a big smile on his face, his efforts on his workstation increased significantly. Sasha didn't say anything, letting him work it to its conclusion. Finally, Galen indicated he was ready.

  "We figured it out," he told her. "It wasn't the frequency that caused the oscillations. It was the ship itself. We hit some kind of resonance. I changed the frequency just a fraction and that should take care of it. The AI has verified my analysis is correct. I'm ready to test whenever you are."

  Sasha looked at Gabo. "Gabo, are you a go with the test? I need you to be 100% certain before we do it."

  He smiled. "I'm most definitely a go. I did have to swap out some power couplers. The higher frequency means we'll get even more power to the shields and that big beam just became a monster beam, even more powerful than before."

  "Are you including monitoring the shield data in our test runs? You said more power to them; I need to know how much more. I quite strongly suspect we're going to need them soon."

  "Oh, yes. I'm just as interested in how much improved they are as you. After all, I'm the one that's going to be in charge of our shields when we need them," He smiled at her, "When we do a longer test, I'll try firing the beam. I suspect we're going to need it too."

  "You're a go for the thirty second run." Sasha finally told them. She hoped she was making the right decision, although this one just felt right. Maybe she could learn to use a little of that feminine intuition that her Princess seemed to have.

  She gave them all a nervous smile. They'd all know shortly.

  Once again they readied themselves for the test. This time Galen programmed a thirty second time period into the system, although he left an abort button on his panel. Just to be on the safe side, Sasha cloned that part of his panel. She suspected if something went wrong, Galen would be too reluctant to hit that button. Sasha knew she wouldn't hesitate, both to protect the ship and to meet the goals set by the Princess.

  When he pressed the virtual go, once again everyone experienced the strange feeling they'd felt before, but everything settled down quickly and it wasn't as bad. Sasha suspected they were just getting used to it. This time Gabo was able to track their position, although he still couldn't believe it. At the end of the test, the timer went off, shutting down the test. This time the transition back to normal was barely noticed.

  They examined the results and everyone stared. In those seconds, they probably had traveled what in the past would have taken minutes. The zeta transition hadn't felt as bad either.

  "Gabo," Sasha asked, "What's the status of our systems?"

  He smiled in answer. "All systems are normal. The power levels spiked during the test but we were never close to danger levels."

  "Shields?"

  "The shields reached a power level I've never seen before, but all the new couplings handled the load without any problems. Just to give you an idea, I believe we could withstand an attack by a super-dreadnought for at least a few moments."

  Everyone stared at him. They just couldn't comprehend it all.

  "Galen, any problems with navigating within the new levels? Again, I need a complete 100% for yes to be your answer."

  "No problems. I tied the system into the new scanning systems. As discussed earlier, just in case, I plan to deliberately avoid all of the rogues, but I'm certain the smaller ones would be no problem for us."

  "Great! We're stopping for today. Everyone go over their systems in detail. I need to know absolutely there aren't any showstoppers before we go ahead. If everything checks out, tomorrow we'll try testing it again."

  Sasha as much as heard their mental groans, but she knew this was the right way to do it. Too much was at risk to do anything else.

  That night Sasha summarized their results and sent it out in a report that Jarra would review whenever she could. That was the process they'd decided on before the team had separated to continue their separate missions. It wasn't like there was a risk to Jarra to use the com unit, so better communication seemed like a good idea.

  Over the next couple of days the process would be repeated, gradually adding time and additional tests. Finally, Sasha felt they were ready for the biggest test of all; firing the beam while in hyperspace. For this crucial test, Galen plotted a course to take them just a little further into the Badlands. He had chosen a rogue moon to become the sacrifice for their test. After all, what would one more crater mean to such an inconsequential thing? Slowing the ship to a near stop inside hyperspace, he looked at the rest of the team.

  "Are we ready?" he had to ask.

  Sasha looked around at the team. "Does anyone have any reason we shouldn't go forward with the test? Gabo, I've looked over your system changes. If anything goes wrong, it should all cut out immediately and shut the system down. What's the worst that could happen? It fails and we have to go back to the design board?"

  "Yeah, I feel really good about it." Gabo smiled at her. "Since it was all your idea, why don't you do the honors?"

  Sasha smiled back. "You guys did all the wor
k, but someone's gotta do it. Send me the link."

  Even as she finished speaking, a 3D VR link appeared on her console. Nervously, Sasha counted down. "Three, two, one..."

  She pressed the virtual button, firing the beam. Although they were in hyperspace, the beam fired in normal space, the space where ships and moons would always exist. The whole thing only took a fraction of a second. A huge explosion of dust and debris blossomed from the target point, so for a moment they couldn't see.

  After all the other surprises, the team shouldn't have been so overwhelmed by the results, but they were. The rogue moon Gabo had picked as his target was rather small but it wasn't tiny. When the debris settled from the test, they all stared in disbelief.

  The moon was gone, totally annihilated!

  #

  Jarra and the rest of her party reluctantly returned to the Relentless after enjoying their time off. Sad that their time all too quickly had come to an end, Jarra knew she had a duty to perform. After all, they had a mission to complete. So they once more boarded the Relentless and knuckled down to their tasks.

  After letting the XO in on the plan, the two carefully plotted a course to the Badlands, adding a couple of days to the journey, but not making any of it appear too obvious. Fortunately, the Admiral was totally oblivious to the subterfuge and the Captain, if he suspected anything, didn't let on. He didn't have any desire to rush there either. But they could delay things only so long and as the days passed, they drew closer to their destination.

  The time passed much too quickly for Jarra, who had come to really enjoy her time with her new friends and especially her time with Jason. Although it had been a short time, the two had formed a very strong bond. Already Jarra was thinking about their possible future together, although she didn't voice any of it out loud.