Ep.#14 - The Weak and the Innocent (The Frontiers Saga)

by Ryk Brown

  “I don’t know that I’d call it more fun,” Loki argued. “We went where the captain needed us at the time. They tell us what to fly and where to fly it, and that’s what we do.”

  “Sorry if flying us around is a bit on the boring side,” Kata apologized.

  “No, that’s quite all right,” Loki insisted. “I don’t mind boring, really.”

  “I do,” Josh disagreed. “You ready back there, Torwell?” He called over his comm-set.

  “We’re ready,” the sergeant replied, sounding bored.

  “Karuzara Departure, Shuttle One Seven, bay four, ready for departure to Porto Santo,” Loki announced over the comms.

  “Shuttle One Seven, Karuzara Departure, cleared for takeoff from bay four. Once clear the bay, climb to plus one hundred and head for tunnel one three. Contact Earth Control on exit.”

  “One Seven clear for takeoff, will climb to plus one hundred, exit one three, and switch to Earth Con,” Loki confirmed over his comm-set.

  Kata looked out the front windows of the shuttle as the big airlock door in front of them split vertically down its center and retracted, disappearing into slots in the rock walls on either side. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped in awe at the view beyond the doors. The door revealed a massive cavern, easily several kilometers in diameter.

  Josh pushed the small joystick on the center console forward, causing the shuttle to roll forward out onto the apron.

  Kata leaned forward, twisting her neck in order to take in the full view as the shuttle pulled out into the open. “Are you getting this?” she muttered to her porta-cam operator.

  “You bet,” Karahl replied, as he held the porta-cam with outstretched arms into the center of the cockpit, panning in all directions.

  “Here, let me give you a better angle,” Josh said as he fired his thrusters and lifted off the apron. He pitched their nose down as the shuttle floated upward, climbing slowly to their assigned transition altitude.

  “Are those all bays like the ones we just came out of?” Karahl asked.

  “Pretty much,” Loki replied. “Some bigger, some smaller.”

  “And this is all in the center of an asteroid?” Kata confirmed in disbelief.

  “Yup,” Josh replied. “An asteroid from nine hundred-something light years away.”

  “Unbelievable,” she mumbled.

  “And it wasn’t this big inside back then,” Josh pointed out. “They’ve made the center at least fifty percent bigger since then.”

  “Are they going to make it even bigger?” she wondered.

  “Doubtful,” Loki said. “If they make the asteroid too hollow, it will lose too much of its integrity. It’s down to a few kilometers thick in some places already.”

  “Is that…?”

  “That’s her,” Josh replied. “That’s the Aurora.”

  Kata stared through the front windows at the long, curved lines of the massive gray-hulled ship. It filled their view, stretching from one end of the window to the other.

  “It’s huge.”

  “Not really,” Loki shrugged. “Not compared to some of the Jung ships. It’s not even half as long as a Jung battleship.”

  “How many ships can be held in here?” she wondered.

  “Easily two about the size of the Aurora,” Loki explained. “There’s also a few dry docks. See, on the far side, that big door in the center, with the smaller ones on either side?”

  “What’s a dry dock?” Kata asked. “I mean, I know what it means to a boat, but I’m not sure what it means to a spaceship.”

  “It means that it’s fully pressurized,” Loki clarified. “It’s still a zero-gravity environment, but the techs don’t have to wear pressure suits. It makes it a lot easier for them to work, and they can get things done to the exterior of the ship a lot faster.”

  “And they have a ‘dry dock’ big enough to fit the Aurora?”

  “Barely,” Josh commented.

  “The Celestia is in there now,” Loki added. “She’s been there for over a month now.”

  “What are they doing to her?”

  “She was pretty badly damaged during the Jung’s last attack on Sol. Took her a month just to limp halfway across the system to make port. They’ve been making repairs, fixing her hull, finishing her up inside, even making a few upgrades.”

  “Finishing her up?”

  “She wasn’t fully fitted out when the Jung first invaded,” Loki explained. “No weapons…barely able to fly, really. They hid her on a tiny moon orbiting a gas giant further out in the system. We found her during the liberation of Earth.”

  “This is so much to take in,” Kata said, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s overwhelming at times.” She looked about the cockpit, feeling slightly disoriented as the shuttle’s nose continued to pitch downward. “I feel like I should be falling forward into the windows,” she observed, “yet I’m not.”

  “That’s because our gravity fields are pulling you in a different direction than what you’re perceiving as up and down, based on the bay deck that we just lifted off from,” Loki explained. “It messes you up quite a bit at first, but you get used to it, eventually.” He turned to look at her. “You guys didn’t get to see any of this on the way in?”

  “No, we were stuck in the back of a cargo shuttle. No windows at all.” She continued staring at the Aurora. “That ship was built by people from Earth?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Josh replied. “They used to have a big assembly facility in Earth orbit. They built all their ships there. First the Scouts, then the defender class ships, and finally the Aurora and the Celestia.”

  “They don’t use it anymore?”

  “Jung took it out during the original invasion of Earth,” Loki replied.

  “Sorry, but I gotta bring the nose back up,” Josh said as he fired the shuttle’s attitude thrusters, “unless you want me to fly backwards out of here.”

  “No, do what you… Wait, you can do that?”

  “Sure!”

  “He was joking, ma’am,” Loki assured her. “We don’t normally fly backwards out the transition tunnels.”

  The shuttle’s nose swung briskly upward. Josh fired the thrusters again, bringing the change in pitch to a smooth stop as the shuttle slowed its ascent.

  “Plus one hundred,” Loki reported.

  “Thrusting forward,” Josh replied as he put the shuttle into forward motion.

  Kata continued to look out the front windows as the shuttle accelerated toward one of the many tunnel openings on the walls of the great central cavern. “Those are the exits?”

  “We call them ‘transition tunnels’,” Loki told her. “They can be used to enter or exit.”

  “How do you know which?”

  “Generally, the even numbered tunnels are entrances, and the odds are for exiting. Besides, there are lights to remind you. See the border strips around the tunnel we’re headed for? It’s green, which means it’s empty and since it’s green around the inside entrance, it’s an exit tunnel.”

  “And those red ones are for incoming ships?”

  “Exactly. The tunnel we’re entering now has a red-lit border around the outside entrance.”

  “How many tunnels are there?”

  “Twenty-three in all, mostly the size we’re entering now,” Loki explained as the shuttle passed through the tunnel entrance threshold. “There are two big ones for ships the Aurora’s size. Tunnels one and two.”

  “Aren’t we going a little fast?” she wondered, tensing up at the sight of the rocky walls streaking past them on all sides at ever increasing rates.

  “Not for him,” Loki muttered as he checked their position. “Exit threshold in five seconds.”

  Kata kept her eyes on the fast approachi
ng tunnel exit ahead of them, afraid to look at the rock walls whizzing past them. She held her breath as they breached the threshold and passed into open space. She could feel her pulse racing, and her breath quickening, as a blanket of distant stars loomed before her. “Oh my God,” she whispered in complete amazement.

  “First time, huh?” Josh asked, smiling.

  “Like I said, first time actually seeing it.”

  Josh laughed. “Oh man, she has got to stand on the bridge of the Aurora, someday.”

  “So where’s the Earth?” she wondered. “I thought the Karuzara asteroid was orbiting it?”

  “She’s behind us,” Josh replied.

  “Departure, Shuttle One Seven, clearing Karuzara space, going to Earth Con,” Loki announced over the comms.

  Josh fired the shuttles main engines and started a gentle turn to bring them around on a heading for Earth.

  “Shuttle One Seven, Departure, Safe flight.”

  The Earth began to slide into view from the left. Josh rolled the shuttle over to put the planet above them for the moment, to give Kata and her porta-cam operator a better view.

  “Earth Control, Shuttle One Seven, just off from Karuzara One Three, looking to transition down for Porto Santo.”

  “Shuttle One Seven, Earth Control, you are clear to jump down at your discretion. Transition clearance good for seventeen minutes.”

  Loki looked at Kata and Karahl, their faces full of wide-eyed wonder as they gazed up at the planet above. “Uh, Earth Control, Shuttle One Seven, negative on the jump. We’re going to take the scenic route and fly her all the way down.”

  “Shuttle One Seven, Earth Control copies. You may start your descent.”

  Loki exchanged smiles with Josh as he prepared a course for him to fly all the way down through the atmosphere of Earth down to Porto Santo Island.

  “So this is it?” Kata said in astonishment. “The birthplace of us all.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Loki replied.

  “What did you mean by ‘the scenic route?’” Kata wondered.

  “We just thought we’d fly all the way down instead of jumping directly to Porto Santo Island.”

  “You don’t normally fly it all the way down?”

  “No, ma’am. Protocol says we jump. It’s faster and it saves propellant.”

  “Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “Naw,” Josh insisted. “We need to do it occasionally to keep our skills up.”

  “Besides, we thought you might like to take a good long look at the Earth,” Loki added.

  Kata smiled. “Yeah, I think we would.”

  * * *

  Jessica peeked past the curtain around Robert’s bed at the Porto Santo base hospital. Her oldest brother was lying there, eyes closed, with his head tilted left, sleeping. Intravenous containers hung from long metal hangers attached to a pole at the foot of his bed. Oxygen was being fed into his nose, and there was a tube leading somewhere under his gown between his legs that she didn’t want to think about. She looked at the sensor panel mounted on the pole at the head of his bed. Although she didn’t understand all of the readings and squiggly lines that flowed across the various colorful ribbon displays, she knew that green was good, and that was the predominant color on the screen at the moment. She moved inside, carefully pulling the curtain closed behind her, then moved along the right side of his bed as quietly as possible.

  “Did you get it?” Robert whispered without opening his eyes.

  Jessica looked disappointed. “How did you know?”

  “Because every one of my siblings thus far has smuggled in a slice of pizza for me.” He opened his eyes and turned to look at her.

  “But did they bring you one with anchovies?” she asked with a grin.

  “You didn’t?” he said in disbelief, scooting himself up in bed a bit.

  She pulled the carefully wrapped contraband from her bag and handed it to him, unwrapping it as she passed it into his eager hands.

  Robert was practically drooling. “Where the hell did you get anchovies?”

  “I had to go all the way to Italy.”

  “You flew to Italy to get me anchovies? How on earth did you get permission to take a shuttle on an anchovy run?”

  “Hey, I’m chief of security for the Aurora, remember? I can go anywhere I want.”

  Robert took a bite, savoring the tiny, fishy, slivers of salt.

  “I can’t promise they won’t make you sick,” she warned. “I got them at a street market in Naples.”

  “Worth the risk,” Robert insisted as he took another bite.

  “Then I win the sibling competition?”

  “Hands down, sister.”

  Jessica smiled. “As usual.” She looked at all the medical paraphernalia again. “What the hell are all these tubes and wires for? You’d think you were dying or something.”

  “They’re just worried that I might develop DCS, like you did.”

  “Pray that they’re wrong… Trust me. I thought you made it to the crawler before the ship came apart?”

  “Not exactly. The ship broke apart right after we jumped. The compartment breached at the back end, and I got sucked aft. I made it into the access tube to the crawler as the ship was coming apart.” He looked her in the eyes. “I saw fucking open space, Jess—stars and everything—under my feet at the open end of the tunnel. Scared the shit out of me. Quite frankly, I don’t even remember getting into the crawler. Next thing I knew, I was in the crawler, floating in a field of debris, from my own ship, watching helplessly while Jung shuttles picked through the pieces looking for the jump field generators.”

  Jessica was silent for a moment, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him. “They pump you full of nanites?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Yeah. The fuckers feel like little needles poking me from the inside.”

  “Be glad that they do,” she told him. “From what I’ve heard, it means you don’t have any of the Jung variety in you. That’s how they got Scalotti, you know.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Robert tugged at his gown, pressing at his lower abdomen. “Why do they hurt mostly in the groin, though?”

  Jessica snickered. “That’s probably why they put a tube up your dick. What the hell were you doing in that crawler, Bobert?”

  Robert looked at her crossly. “My dick is just fine, thank you.” He adjusted himself in his bed and settled back down. “They have to monitor my fluid output, make sure my kidneys aren’t damaged.”

  “So, anyway, I’ve got good news…and I’ve got bad news,” she told him.

  “Give me the bad news first,” he said as he finished his last bite of pizza.

  “I can’t, it won’t make sense.”

  “Then give me the good news.”

  “Because of that jump of yours, we managed to capture the Jar-Benakh intact.”

  “Seriously? You mean they boarded her?”

  “Yeah. Telles took a handful of Ghatazhak in and kept the Jung busy until reinforcements arrived. It’s ours. They’re hauling prisoners down here as we speak. All because your little jump opened up a hole in her side.”

  “That’s incredible,” he exclaimed.

  “Yeah, it is. Dumar wants to fix her up and put a jump drive on her.”

  “That’s great!” he exclaimed. “Wait… What’s the bad news?”

  “They’re giving command of her to Roselle.”

  “You’re kidding me!”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “That figures. I lose my ship, and he gets a new one… A bigger one at that.”

  “You’re getting a new ship too,” she told him.

  “I am?”

  “Actually, you’re getting a whole
fleet of ships, so to speak.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the Tannan gunboat project? You’re going to run the crew training program.”

  “I’m going to be a teacher?” Robert leaned back in bed and closed his eyes, sighing heavily. “That should have been the bad news.”

  “Only until the Tannans are up and running. Then they’ll take over and teach their own. Hey, at least you’re getting the first one as your own ship.”

  “So I’m going to be a test pilot as well?”

  “I guess you could call it that. Someone’s got to figure out how to fly the new ships, right? Figure out how to get the most out of them, develop attack strategies, discover their strengths and weaknesses?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “And from what I’ve seen, the new gunboats are going to be pretty sweet.”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said, not quite convinced that his new assignment was as good as his little sister was trying to make it sound. “I think you’re going to have go back to Italy and get me another slice of pizza.”

  “What,” she said, reaching back into her bag, “you thought I went all the way to Italy and only bought one slice?”

  * * *

  “This is amazing,” Cameron exclaimed as she dished up another portion of the strange purple salad that Vladimir had made. “What did you call it again?”

  A long string of Russian words poured out of Vladimir’s mouth, none of which she nor Nathan could even begin to understand, let alone repeat. She stared at him for a moment, trying to form the words.

  “Just call it beet salad,” Nathan suggested.

  “I had no idea you were so skilled in the galley,” Cameron admitted.

  “Russian winters…very cold,” Vladimir explained as he shoveled a spoonful of the salad into his mouth. “I spent many evenings with my babushka in the kitchen, helping her cook.”

  “I’m actually becoming quite the connoisseur of Russian cuisine,” Nathan boasted. “Not to mention I’ve put on a few extra pounds,” he added, patting his belly.