Waypoint Magellan

by L S Roebuck

  “Sure — it would take nine years to reach Earth,” Skip thought. “They’d take a few years to work out a grand plan and then a decade or so to actually build the ship.”

  “And in the meantime,” Moreno jumped in, “highly secret information is sent to the Marine commanders, already vetted as most trusted and Earth loyal, about the existence of this program.”

  “So what do you know, and how do you know it?” North asked.

  “Well, when I became XO eight years ago, the standard operating procedure was for the Commander to review hundreds of top-secret, need-to-know only briefings — not even governors had access to this info — so if a Marine commander died, the next in line would know any critical secret information. We covered something called Project Prime, a new secret warship being built as an insurance policy in case any of the crazy rebellion rumors were true. I hardly remember the briefing, except for the fact that Anderson thought the intel on a potential uprising was balderdash.”

  “And so much time had passed since the briefing, the likelihood of the threat being real seemed remote,” North said.

  Skip’s eyes lit up. “You think Magnus is that ship! You think it’s been broadcasting false reports about its whereabouts and intentions, and that it’s not a half lightyear away, but rather its days away — close enough for near instant radio contact?”

  Skip snapped his fingers. “Of course! That explains the anomalies in the transmission reports – they were falsified. You know I’ve been tracking that for years.”

  “The only reason we haven’t been able to contact them or them us is because of the American Spirit jamming,” Moreno said. “And when the jamming was down so the Chasm agents could communicate to their teams on the waypoint, we could get our distress signal out, and the Magnus was close enough to receive it and reply.”

  Skip smiled. “But the American Spirit can contact them, so why aren’t they running?”

  “Because they believe the cover story, that Magnus is just another deep space supply ship. So they want to make sure there is nothing for them to save by the time they arrive, hence trying to kill our power. The quickest way to make sure that dead men tell no tales,” North added. “If they run now, we could survive and Magellan could be saved. No, they must finish what they started. At all costs.”

  “My theory is that Magnus lied again about how far out it was,” Moreno said. “They figured hostiles could be monitoring the transmission, though it was encrypted, and that those hostiles might already be suspicious that Magnus was more than meets the eye because it was a half lightyear from where she was supposed to be. So they lied. Maybe they were half that distance away — we could know they were coming, and they would have the element of surprise. If American Spirit wasn’t actively scanning for them yet — and why would they if they were still days out — they could sneak up out of nowhere, save Magellan and stop the American Spirit.”

  “Deus Ex Magnus,” Thor said. North and Skip both gave Thor strange looks at his use of the Latin phrase. “What? It’s a literary term. I was an English major. Never mind.”

  Kimberly Macready sat in the captain’s chair on the American Spirit. Sparks entered the bridge and walked up to the center seat.

  “Sparks,” Kimberly smiled faintly. “Status report.”

  “We believe we have two more days of bombardment before we completely destroy their power reserves.”

  “What can we do to increase the power to the bombarding cannons?” Kimberly asked, as she ran outcome models in her head.

  “We have all the power except life support, artificial gravity, engine spool up and the electromagnetic jammer diverted to the weapons. The amount of power life support and gravity take up is insignificant and wouldn’t change the timetable.”

  “What about engine spool and the jammer?” Kimberly asked.

  “We could cut our timeframe for permanent decommission of Magellan by about 30 hours,” Sparks said. “But if we powered down the standby engine spool up, it could take us weeks to bring the interstellar engines online for departure. Don’t we want to be gone when the Magnus arrives?”

  “It doesn’t matter if everyone on Magellan is dead,” Kimberly said. “Magnus could be an opportunity. We could commandeer the vessel if we are prepared. I’m sure the resources on that ship are substantive. We just need to be ready to disable it as soon as it is in weapons range.”

  “Why don't we just power down the jammer,” Sparks said. “We could get the job done before Magnus arrives and be ready to speed out of here, so we can avoid the confrontation.”

  “That has to be the least intelligent idea that has ever escaped your lips,” Kimberly scolded her protégé. “We can’t risk Magnus having open communication with Magellan. They could already be in instant radio range. We should keep everyone in the dark. Secrecy is our security. That’s our priority. Take the engine spool offline and keep jamming.”

  “Very good then,” Sparks said.

  “How’s Amberly?”

  “Doc Appleton said she is going to make a full recovery. Why do you care? You were going to kill her back on Magellan,” Sparks said, with a bit of jealously creeping into her tone.

  “She is my daughter,” Kimberly said flatly. “And she will be a great asset to our order. Don’t underestimate her intelligence and her potential. Once we get her away from the influence of idiots like Dek and that moron, North, she will be a great leader. She was born for it.”

  “We can’t trust her,” Sparks argued. “We should space her and let her be at peace with her soon-to-be dead fellows on Magellan.”

  “I’ll leave that for the Chairman to decide,” Kimberly said, annoyed at Sparks’ impertinence. Still, Kimberly had to admit Sparks had earned a larger voice at the Chasm table considering she was one of her few colleagues to be an unqualified success in wrapping up the Magellan mission.

  Kimberly turned to her yeoman, Groben. “Have Amberly brought to the bridge when she is able.”

  The yeoman, a tall, thin man, 25 years old, with dirty blonde hair, snapped in salute and left the bridge to carry out his orders.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Amberly Macready did not want to see her mother.

  Four days had passed since Kimberly Macready took her daughter as a hostage to escape the doomed Magellan, when Amberly had taken the bullet that was meant for her mother.

  The doctors told Amberly she was lucky the bullet missed the major organs, but Amberly thought she would have been luckier if the bullet would have killed her. She couldn’t help but be half angry with North. Why couldn’t he have just shot them both, mother and daughter, and ended Raven One’s tyranny right then and there?

  Of course, she knew the answer, and it made her even more distressed. North loved her; and even though he believed she had no intention of returning that love, he couldn’t bring himself to take a chance that he might end Amberly.

  Now Amberly was the one who was going to have to live, knowing that she was an accessory — albeit a naïve one — in North’s death.

  Amberly felt like nothing more than a prop since the day she was born in her mother’s lifelong undercover operation to subdue or kill the 10,000 inhabitants of Magellan. That she unintentionally aided the so-called Raven One made Amberly loathe herself almost as much as she did her mother.

  Still, she wanted to know the fate of her home, Magellan, as hard as it might be to face that truth. Amberly knew she had to see with her own eyes; she could not believe what her lying mother told her.

  The yeoman escorted Amberly onto the bridge. She looked around and quickly exchanged ugly glances with Sparks.

  Her mother was seated in the captain’s chair, facing away from her toward the main viewport. Her raven black hair covered her round head, and Amberly looked around for some sort of weapon that she could impale that head with but saw no opportunity.

  Then, Amberly looked past her mother through the viewport, and she gasped and choked back tears.

  Nearly eve
ry square meter of Magellan’s external hull, once gleaming in stellar light, was pocked with scorch marks and plasma holes. Smoke, water crystals and other gasses slowly poured out of some of the holes in the hull. Fragments of metal and carbon-fiber frame that had broken loose in the bombardment now created a cloud of debris which floated around the station.

  “It’s ironic, sweetheart, that something so horrifying will be the beginning of something so beautiful,” Kimberly said, without turning to face her daughter. “Sort of like childbirth — something painful begets a beautiful future.” Kimberly wore the dress uniform of the Magellan science corps, white and sleek, the same uniform she had worn seven years ago when Amberly was just a girl. Kimberly was not a woman of complete science however. The outfit had one military trapping: a thigh holster with her small hold out pistol.

  “You’re crazy,” Amberly said, and then looked around at the Chasm operators standing at the various stations on the bridge. “You are all crazy! Humanity is not a cosmic accident waiting for you to fix. What makes us beautiful is that we are all broken. You can’t purge the brokenness out of us. You can try to social engineer and rewrite everything that makes us human: our weaknesses, the love of a man and a woman, our individualism, our competitive spirit, whatever you progressives want to fix. But it won’t change anything. Everything you don’t like about Earth is hardcoded in your DNA and in your souls. Don't you see? You are bringing with you the very thing you are trying to escape: your humanity.”

  “Amberly, you’re —” Kimberly tried to silence her daughter.

  “You might as well airlock me now. I will not stop fighting you, and I will always help everyone remember how exceptional individuals can be,” Amberly shouted with an explosive passion that took back the more docile Chasm bridge officers. “My friend North, who is 10 times the man of any of you emasculated Chasm males, believed in grace, that anyone could be redeemed. I look at you, all part of this twisted murderous insane cult, and I think my friend is wrong. If there is a hell, I hope you all burn in it.”

  The bridge was silent. Most of the bridge officers expected Kimberly would address that death-wish of a rant quickly, but when Kimberly said nothing, the space grew awkward.

  A proximity sensor alarm sounded at the tactical station breaking the silence. A Chasm agent manning the station looked down and reported in a somewhat surprised voice, “Captain Macready, it’s the Magnus!? She’s now in sensor range.”

  “Bring us around,” Kimberly ordered the pilot. “Let’s bring our guns to bear quickly and disable the ship before it knows what is going on.”

  “Something’s not right,” the tactical officer reported. “I’m seeing five vessels now — the Magnus — and what looks like … four smaller, um, corvette class ships.”

  Realization lighted Raven One’s eyes. “Magnus is not a supply ship,” she said, alarm juicing her voice. “It’s a warship. Apparently with a hangar full of fighters.”

  “We are so screwed,” Sparks muttered.

  Raven One began issuing rapid-fire commands. “Helmsman, belay that order to bring us around. Bear us back down on Magellan. Sparks, all power to the guns. Redirect jamming, life support, everything. We need to finish off Magellan. Focus on the command center. Looks like we all get to die for Arara.”

  “The Magnus is trying to call us,” Sparks announced from the comm station.

  “Let’s hear it then,” Kimberly said. “Maybe we can stall them long enough to finish off Magellan. Don't let up on the firing.”

  “Magnus, we copy,” Sparks spoke into the receiver. “I am patching you with American Spirit Commanding Officer Raven One.”

  A clear, baritone voice came over the radio. “Captain, American Spirit, this is Captain Jonas Obadiah of the U.S.S. Magnus. Please cease hostilities and surrender your ship immediately and unconditionally, or we will disable your ship. I have four corvettes with orders to engage, and they will not be withdrawn until you cease fire on the Magellan and surrender. Will you comply, American Spirit?”

  “Magnus, you are too late,” Kimberly said. “Our work is nearly finished. But tell me, Captain, what do you really know about us? About our attempt to save humanity.”

  “We can discuss that at length after you surrender. I estimate about 15 minutes before our Corvettes intercept you,” Obadiah said plainly. “Please. The Magnus is superior to the American Spirit in every way. Our ship’s armor plating is practically impervious to the limited fire power of your ship.”

  “We have no quarrel with you,” Kimberly said, hoping to delay Magnus as much as possible. “May I suggest a 30-minute cease fire while we consider our options.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Captain. Our spectrometer suggests that you are firing on Magellan as we speak. I repeat, surrender immediately, or we fire our laser array to disable your ship.”

  Kimberly turned to Sparks. “Cut him off.”

  Sparks complied, and ended the connection with Magnus.

  Kimberly started reciting facts to herself. “Magellan’s batteries are gone, but it could take hours or weeks for everyone to freeze out. Magnus is bearing down on us and will surely destroy us before we can finish Magellan conventionally. There is only one way to ensure Magellan’s destruction.”

  Amberly was trying to process everything that was happening. Earth wasn’t caught unaware — they had been making a response to Chasm. There was a chance that North, Kora and the others could be saved, that her home could be saved.

  Hope.

  Amberly’s hope was Kimberly’s desperation, so Amberly suspected her mother would do something desperate.

  “No main engines?” Kimberly asked what she already knew.

  “Offline to direct power to the guns. It would take us too long to spool the engines back online,” Sparks replied. “At least five hours.”

  “What about navigational thrusters,” Kimberly said. “How much speed could we generate by employing those to propel us towards the Magellan?”

  “Maybe, 100 kilometers an hour if we backed up a kilometer or so and got a running start.”

  “That’s how it ends for us then, my friend. In death, we will give humanity a chance to be reborn,” Kimberly said to Sparks, and turned to her daughter. “Sweet Amberly, I wanted so much to show you the north shores of the Lewis Islands where I fell in love with the ocean. Now, I am afraid you die with us.”

  Kimberly took a deep breath and issued the command, “All hands, prepare for ramming. Sparks, prepare to initiate a core self-destruct.”

  Amberly felt the hope that sprung up inside of her when the Magnus arrived evaporate. An anti-matter explosion in the American Spirit reactor would ensure that if the collision between the American Spirit and the Magellan didn’t utterly decimate the waypoint, the energy released from the explosion would incinerate it.

  The plasma bombardment stopped.

  “Why are they letting up?” Thor wondered. He looked particularly haggard, refusing to sleep for days and bundled in a pile of blankets.

  Zelma shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they are saving their energy now that they know we have almost no reserve energy left?”

  “No. Macready knows she’s close to breaching the command center,” Moreno said. She was a silhouette sitting in the command well, backlit by emergency lights. All non-essential systems had already been shut down. “Something else is going on.”

  “Magnus must be here,” North said, his breath visible in the near zero-degree atmosphere. “Do we have enough power to bring up the radio?”

  “No,” Skip replied. “And even if we did, it would probably be useless because of the jamming.”

  “We’ve done everything we can to maximize our chances of survival,” Moreno said. “All we can do is sit and wait.”

  “And pray,” North added. And he did.

  The pilot double-checked his data. “We’ll need to reposition several kilometers to begin the run, Raven One. But do we need to do this? There has to be another way to finish Mage
llan without us committing suicide in the process?”

  Some of the other officers on the bridge murmured in agreement. Kimberly stood up and glared at each of them individually as she pulled a small handgun from her thigh holster. She aimed it at the head of the pilot.

  “Don’t you think if there was another way, that I would have figured it out? I am Raven One. Now is not the time to grow weak. We are close. I cannot afford any disloyalty or questioning of my absolute orders now. Yours is not to reason why – yours is to do, and die.” Kimberly pulled the trigger and the pilot slumped over, dead.

  “Sparks, take his place,” Kimberly said, as she returned the pistol to its holster.

  Amberly had to stop this. At least she had to try.

  “Sparks, this is madness,” Amberly begged. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Sparks tipped her head toward the dead pilot and then took his seat.

  Amberly looked around at all the bridge crew. She could see it in their eyes. They were all terrified. She doubted if any of them wanted to die for the cause; but they would because her mother willed it, and they felt powerless to stop her.

  “Listen to me, all of you!” Amberly said. “You don’t have to be killers like this. You all have a choice. You are all individuals and your souls will be responsible for the actions you take, or don’t take, to stop this insanity.”

  Kimberly looked at her Yeoman. “Summon security and have my daughter removed from the bridge immediately.”

  The word “immediately” had barely rolled off her lips when the bridge buckled, like a moving tube car hitting a stationary one from behind. Those standing on the bridge, including Amberly, were thrown to the floor.

  “What was that?” Sparks asked.

  Groben stepped into the unmanned engineering station and read the flashing lines from the screen.

  “Damage report: Our rear engines are destroyed,” the yeoman reported. “Fortunately, no hull breaches. Looks like it was a precision strike meant to only disable us.

  “How? The corvettes are still ten minutes off,” Sparks questioned.