by T J Mott
Thaddeus and Reynolds both shot to their feet and exchanged worried glances. “Explain yourself!” Reynolds barked at the pilot.
Green squirmed and grunted beneath Poulsen’s knee. She twisted his arm harder and harder until he quit struggling. “He sent out a phi-band broadcast! He announced our location and an offer to surrender Admiral Marcell to the first ship that arrives!”
Reynolds swore, and Thaddeus realized he had never before witnessed the mild-mannered captain use strong language.
“I was watching the phi-band sensors and I didn’t see anything!” protested the ensign who currently sat at the secondary sensor station next to Green’s.
“I almost missed it myself,” Poulsen said. “Captain, Admiral, there are others with him! I’ll explain but you need to act now! Lock down the ship!”
Thaddeus punched the comm buttons at his station. “Rossell! Weber! Deploy your platoon immediately! We may be facing a mutiny!”
Weber responded immediately in a gruff and confident voice. “Aye, Admiral!”
Thaddeus stepped further into the Command Center, approaching the commotion near the piloting and sensors stations. “Keep talking, Lieutenant,” he told her.
Green started to say something, but Poulsen gave his arm another twist and shook her head. “I was watching the phi flashes on our sensors as more pursuers jumped in-system. I thought the sensors glitched. I saw a flash with a hard cut in the middle of it, like the sensors blacked out for a few milliseconds. I looked at the maintenance records and found someone reconfigured the phi sensors to black out if our own phi transceiver transmitted. It was a lazy, obvious hack, so I disabled the blackout, and ten minutes later the broadcast happened again. This time I caught the full message text. It’s currently up on my displays.”
Thad stepped to her station to take a look. After speed-reading the message, he activated the comm. “Rossell, check your transports in the hangar, one of them may have armed mutineers aboard. And send a few men up to the Command Center to take a prisoner.”
He looked around the room and saw the fresh worry on his officers’ faces. Just moments before, they’d been certain of their escape. Now, nobody was certain of anything. How many ships had received the broadcast and were already in hyperspace to intercept them? Phi-band comms were fairly short-range, but any ships within a light-year or so could have seen it, and several could already be jumping towards the Caracal, which was still limping along with severe damage.
They needed to accelerate their plans, he realized. They needed to quickly get some distance from the broadcast location. The message included their current trajectory, so they also needed to alter their course.
But first things first. “Allen, shut down the phi transceiver, I don’t want any more messages going out!” Thad stepped up to Poulsen and Green. He scowled at the traitor on the deck, and then angrily kicked the downed gunner in the ribs as he lay pinned down by the pilot. Then he placed his boot down on the back of his neck to hold him down. “Poulsen, back to your station!” he ordered over Green’s pained groans. “Alter course so the transmitted trajectory is wrong, and give us maximum acceleration! We need to get to our jump point as quickly as possible!”
***
“The tanks are full. Temperature holding at four degrees absolute. Commodore, I think we’re ready to actually test this.”
“Fantastic!” Commodore Cooper was an excitable man, and now he sat aboard an experimental starship with a new piece of revolutionary technology. The galaxy would be a very different place within a couple decades. Part of him considered ordering a hit to destroy the other prototypes and all the designers’ blueprints, to make sure the new hyperdrive would be exclusive to the Organization for the time being. He’d have to discuss that with Marcell once he returned.
He sat in one of the passenger seats in the X-11’s small bridge and checked his restraints again. Not that they were likely to help much if something went horribly wrong and he was subjected to a few million G’s during the jump. The ship had just undocked from the Phantom, which had towed it one jump away from Headquarters, and both ships now sat in deep space several light-years away from Headquarters for security purposes.
“So. Course parameters?” the pilot, Lieutenant Maney, asked.
Cooper answered quickly. “Just pick a direction. Let’s start short, but fast, something that we know will test the hyperdrive. How about one quarter light-year, at three light-years per hour.” He smiled. Most ships cruised at slightly above a light-year per hour. The design specifications for the X-11 said it could safely cruise at three, and had an emergency top speed of around four.
Some of the fastest starships, including a few of those in Marcell’s Blue Fleet, could briefly manage two. And any normal starship would quickly dissociate into a sparse cloud of superheated plasma millions of kilometers long if it attempted three.
“Aye, sir.” Maney keyed some settings into his terminal. “Course set, and uploaded to the Phantom. Ready to jump on your command.”
“This is fun!” Cooper smiled broadly, happy to be away from his desk for a day. “Well, Lieutenant, let’s go! Let her rip!”
“Aye, sir. Engaging hyperdrive.”
It was nothing like a standard hyperspace jump. The view outside the cockpit went pure black, as normal, but missing was the distinctive clunk as the ship transitioned. Instead, a deep rumble formed, raising up through the octaves, becoming higher and higher and eventually fading as it went ultrasonic and left the range of human hearing. The transition was smooth, with none of the characteristic clunks, bangs, or creaks that many hyperdrive-equipped starships exhibited. “So, that’s it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the pilot responded. “That was pretty smooth.” He reviewed the data on his terminal. “Cryotanks are holding steady at four degrees absolute. We’re clearly boiling off some helium, but our heat output is only just a fraction of a standard drive. I think it works.”
Several minutes later they dropped out of hyperspace. The exit was just as smooth, and even quieter. The drive briefly hummed as it transitioned the ship back to sublight speeds and the starfield re-appeared outside. “We’re back at sublight. Hailing the Phantom via phi-band…”
“X-11, Phantom. I’d call that a success, you’re almost exactly point-two-five light-years away in the proper direction. How was the jump?”
“All’s well!” Cooper answered. “How did that look on the sensors?”
“The phi flashes were definitely more powerful than normal. We may need to run some trials to figure out the jump detection range, but it’ll be beyond what we’re used to. Other than that, it looked pretty standard.”
“Interesting. Thanks, Phantom. We’ll be back shortly, X-11 out. Lieutenant, take us back. Speed of three-point-five this time!”
***
“One—no, two, phi flashes! Ten thousand kilometers to the aft!” Threat alarms suddenly began to blare in the Command Center.
The Marines quickly took charge of Green. They cuffed him, and as they dragged him past the pilot’s station towards the front door to the Command Center, he spat at Lieutenant Poulsen. “You just got us all killed you stupid bitch!” One of the Marines clubbed him across the face and he went limp.
Reynolds exchanged glances with Thad. “We have to jump,” he said, speaking softly so as to only address Thaddeus. Thad nodded his solemn agreement. This would likely be the jump that allowed their pursuers to complete their profile of the Caracal’s hyperdrive signature, but they were still too far away from the carbon star to execute their planned phi-distorting jump from the stellar atmosphere.
“They’re rapidly gaining on us!” the young ensign at the sensor station announced.
“I can’t push the main thrusters any harder without putting us into a spin!” Poulsen screamed back. “Our center of thrust is all fucked up with both port thrusters down!”
Thad’s thoughts swirled as he tried to analyze the situation. There had to be a way out. He glanced ar
ound the Command Center, and his gaze stopped to rest on Adelia. She hadn’t moved. She was pale and perfectly still, looking almost as if she was comatose with her eyes open.
He couldn’t give up now, not after all the effort he’d just spent to rescue her. She was his only clue, his only connection, to Earth. He had to protect her.
He licked his lips to re-wet them. “Can you jump us into the star’s atmosphere?” he asked. “To get us in position for the next jump, quickly?” He remembered that their last hyperspace jump was a misjump. But misjumps were usually off by some fixed percentage, due to uncorrected factors in the hyperspace equations resulting from damage. Maybe the error was small enough that a misjump at short range near a star wouldn’t be catastrophic.
“No, the hyperspace equations are symmetrical so the distortion and uncertainty goes both ways,” Poulsen answered. “If we target the star’s atmosphere, there’s no guarantee we’d actually exit hyperspace in the outer atmosphere. We could end up deep inside the core!”
He pondered that, and wished he’d understood the math behind her gambit. Was the probability region of their hyperspace exit evenly-distributed within the star’s volume? If so, by simple chance they’d most likely emerge in the outer regions. Or could there be a bias towards the massive, superheated core deep within?
He looked again at Adelia. She looked terrified. Then the lights flickered and Thad stumbled and started to fall. And then a sense of dread filled him as he realized the truth. He wasn’t falling. He was floating.
“We can’t jump anyway!” declared Commander Allen. “The primary gravity generator just took a hit! And the thruster interlocks kicked in, we’re limited to two G’s if we re-engage them!”
“Two G’s won’t get us anywhere!” Thad stated unnecessarily as he pushed off a nearby workstation and floated back towards the Command Box. It would be both uncomfortable and disorienting without the gravity system to counteract it inside the ship. The ship’s layout was not designed to be navigated when the apparent direction of “down” was actually to the rear. “Get your men working on the gravity system immediately!”
“We’re being hailed!”
He pulled himself into his seat as the comm channel became active. “Commander Green,” a deep voice announced. “I’m Commodore Sutton of the Crimson Flare. While I appreciate your offer to take Thaddeus Marcell alive and safely escort you from this system, I have to refuse. There are too many ships out here already, and if word gets out that I have him and don’t intend to share, they’ll try to kill me next.”
How can I stall him? Can I buy time for Allen to patch up the gravity and get the hyperdrive going again? “This is Marcell. Commander Green is in the brig, but I guess I can patch you through if you still want to talk to him. Or maybe you’d like to fly a shuttle over and meet him there in person?”
The voice laughed. “I wondered how long he’d last after we received his first broadcast. That seemed…quite foolish. In any case, for my own survival I have no choice but to kill you. A recording of your ship’s destruction is still worth quite a bit, and I’ll get the privilege of being recognized as the one who finally rid this part of galaxy of Thaddeus Marcell. Good day.”
The comm chimed to announce that the channel had closed. Moments later, he felt and heard deep rumbles and shudders through the frigate’s hull as it was attacked. “They’ve moved to our port side. Dammit, they’re firing right through the holes in our armor! The sensor processors are offline!”
The lights flickered, blacked out, and then a couple of them returned to emergency power a moment later. “The main reactor just shut down,” Commander Allen stated. His face became deathly pale. “We’re on the aux reactor only. Main thrusters are down.”
The hull continued to clank and shudder under the bombardment of the Crimson Flare, and his mind threatened to shut down completely. What options did he have without the main reactor?
He looked to Adelia, who was clinging tightly with white knuckles and fingers to the armrests of her chair to keep from floating away. And she looked like she was getting sick. I can’t give up now. I can’t give up on her now. I can’t give up on Earth now. “Roll us around, get them to our starboard side and return fire!” Thad ordered.
“Sir, we have no sensors! We don’t even know where they are!”
The bombardment continued. He heard a muffled explosion which reverberated through the hull for several long seconds. The emergency lighting flickered again.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and for the first time ever, Thaddeus saw no clever way out. He had lost this battle. Completely. He had no sensors so he couldn’t shoot back. He had no main reactor, so the main thrusters were offline. And even if the reactor were functional, without gravity he couldn’t even use the hyperdrive.
The bombardment continued, and there was only one thing he could do.
He tapped the comm panel and opened a shipwide channel. “Abandon ship.”
***
They traveled silently, pulling themselves through the inner corridors of the frigate by whatever was within reach, whether handholds, or conduits, or lighting fixtures. They clumsily navigated the zero-gravity environment to reach the lifepod—any lifepod—stored within the framework of the outer hull. The Caracal’s battered frame continued to resound with the deadly, deafening clangs and thunks of kinetic weapon impacts, punctuated by the occasional rumbling explosion when something volatile took a hit and failed.
The entire time, his mind was overwhelmed by the realization that he’d failed and was about to lose everything. He looked over his shoulder for a moment and watched as she pulled herself along behind him, and he felt his stomach turn sour. I just rescued her from slavery—from sex slavery. And if we escape, if she survives, chances are she’ll end up right back where she was before.
And I’ll be dead. Or worse.
I have to find a lifepod for Adelia. He couldn’t join her, couldn’t risk having her become collateral damage if they were found together. He gulped. I may have to…stay behind. It would be better for me.
Would it be better for her? Can I help her escape, knowing what kind of life she’ll be returning to?
What are the chances they’ll just let her—and the rest of the crew—go? Will they bother selling everyone into slavery once they’ve received the bounties?
The pair continued pulling themselves towards the hull, saying nothing to each other as they moved, encountering no one else along the way. Thaddeus had frozen in the Command Center, delaying them just enough to be well behind the rest of the crew in evacuating. Along the way, he reflected on all he’d done while searching for Earth. The vast information network he’d set up, the collections of technology he stored at Headquarters with the intention of presenting it all to Earth to prepare it for encountering the rest of the galaxy.
And now it was all for nothing.
So this is how it ends. Betrayed by members of my own crew, and shot down for a kill bounty.
And the bombardment continued. The explosions and impacts began to sound muffled, and the only thing he could hear during the rare quiet moment was the ringing of his own ears.
As they approached another bulkhead hatchway, there was a terrifying bang and the hatch automatically slammed shut in front of him. Thaddeus shouted a curse. “There’s a hull breach on the other side. Turn around!” He twisted himself around and followed behind Adelia as she pulled herself back towards the hatch they had just passed through.
Then he heard another deafening series of explosions, these ones sounding much closer, and Thad saw a brilliant flash of light through the hatch just before it too slammed shut in front of them.
Chapter 17
The passageway was short, only seven or eight meters long, and only wide enough for a pair of crewman to walk past each other. It was just a simple length of corridor between separate sections of a starship and otherwise had no purpose. Each end was a hatchway. Each hatch had just enough backup power to very quickly sl
am shut and seal the section if a loss of atmosphere occured, preventing the connecting section from also depressurizing.
And apparently it had just enough structural integrity to retain atmosphere.
The main lights were out, as were the emergency lights. The only illumination came from the one tiny screen along the wall, which had a single low-power microprocessor for maintaining and querying the few systems that ran through the passageway.
It didn’t have much of a link to anything though. The passage held a few functioning cells from the ship’s distributed backup battery system, which powered the tiny terminal, and would have powered the emergency light if the lighting element hadn’t been smashed.
Querying the terminal didn’t reveal much else, unfortunately. The passage’s local network segment was still active, but the terminal could not contact any system but the backup batteries. As far as the little microprocessor could tell, it was installed aboard a singular passageway that was not connected to the rest of a starship.
Thaddeus had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. The terminal didn’t even have a working clock application since it relied on timekeeping signals sent over the network from the ship’s now-disconnected main computers. His pocket comm was also nonfunctional, indicating that the ship’s internal wireless comm coverage was offline.
Nor was he certain of the extent of his injuries. He didn’t think he had any broken bones, but he felt like his entire body was one gigantic bruise. He couldn’t really remember the final moments of the attack, but his body must have slammed into the walls and bulkheads multiple times.
The passage didn’t even have any life support sensors. Thad had no way of knowing what the air pressure was, if any atmosphere was leaking, whether there were any active carbon dioxide scrubbers, or what the oxygen content was.
It was completely silent. It was cool, too, so Thad surmised that it had drifted out of the red giant’s corona while he was unconscious.
