“Thanks, Addy,” Lucien said, and let out a long sigh. He slowed his pace, drifting out of earshot of Tyra. “I feel like it’s my fault,” he whispered. “Brak came along because of me. He stayed for the adventure, but now he’s going to be sitting on the sidelines for the next eight years while we do all the exploring. I don’t even think there’s another Gor on Astralis to keep him company. He’s going to be utterly alone.”
“You can’t put all that on yourself. He’s responsible for his own actions. He had a choice. He made the wrong one.”
“His people were slaves,” Lucien replied. “And most of them died at the hands of their Sythian masters. The Faros aren’t a lot different from the Sythians. I don’t blame Brak for losing it. I probably would have, too.”
“Yeah…” Addy said. “Everyone’s a product of their past, aren’t they?”
The question was obviously rhetorical, but the way Addy said it sparked his curiosity. He glanced at her, about to ask more—
But the lights in the corridor dimmed to a bloody red and klaxons sounded. Pandora’s voice crackled out over the ship’s PA system. “Red alert! All hands to battle stations!”
Lucien hesitated for a split second.
“Go!” Addy said, giving him a sudden shove from behind.
Lucien sprinted down the corridor to the bridge with visions of cigar-shaped ships descending on their galleon in his mind’s eye.
Chapter 21
“Sensors, report!” Tyra ordered.
“Two dozen capital-class vessels, the nearest at just under forty thousand klicks,” Pandora replied. “Visual profiles match the Faros’ vessels.”
“Two dozen? That’s twice as many as we found at Arachnai-1,” Tyra said.
“Looks like they called for backup,” Lucien said. “How did they find us?”
“They must have planted a tracking device on our shuttle after we landed,” Tyra said. “Pandora, jettison shuttle one immediately.”
“Aye, ma’am… shuttle away.”
“How long before we can jump again?” Tyra replied.
“We could plot a micro-jump to the nearest star in less than a second,” Pandora replied. “But the drive system needs twenty-six minutes to cool down and charge its capacitors after the last jump. There are seventeen minutes remaining.”
“Right,” Tyra replied. “Then that’s how long we need to last. Set course away from the enemy ships, full thrust.”
Lucien was surprised that the drive system only needed twenty-six minutes to cool down. All the galleons he’d been on required a full hour.
“They have us surrounded, ma’am,” Pandora said. “There is no way to set a course away from the enemy. Furthermore, their quantum jamming fields extend almost thirty-five thousand klicks from their vessels. Those fields will overlap our position long before our capacitors can recharge, and we will be unable to jump.”
“The bot’s right,” Garek said.
Tyra brought up a tactical map from her station and promptly frowned. “Commander Ortane, launch all fighters, but keep them close for now.”
“Launching fighters…” All six of them, he added to himself.
“How long before they reach firing range with us?” Tyra asked.
The deck shuddered, and they heard a muffled impact over the sound in space simulator (SISS). The lights on the bridge dimmed, and then brightened again as the shields drew extra power to absorb the attack.
“Taking fire from enemy lasers!” Garek announced. “Shields holding at 98%.”
“How’s that possible?” Tyra asked.
They were still thirty seven thousand klicks from the nearest enemy ship. That put the enemy’s effective laser range at more than double Astralis’s, which was in turn superior to that of any galleon Lucien had ever been on.
“We’re being hailed,” he said as the comms display lit up with an incoming message. “I think that was just a warning shot.”
“Don’t answer yet,” Tyra said. “Pandora…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“We could jump out immediately if we shunted all the power from the shields and emergency reserves into our jump capacitors.”
“Theoretically, but there’s also a thirty-two percent chance that we’ll overload the system and trigger a catastrophic containment breach in the reactor core.”
“That’s better than the 100% chance we’ll be destroyed by those cruisers. Get ready to shunt power and jump away.”
“Aye aye,” Pandora replied.
A flurry of impacts sounded over the SISS and the deck vibrated continuously under their feet.
“Shields at 68%!” Garek called out. “You’d better shunt power fast, or there’s not going to be any left!”
Lucien sent Tyra a worried look. “If you shunt power away from the shields, we’ll be destroyed by the next attack.”
“Answer the hail, Commander. Tell them we surrender. That should get them to stop firing for a moment.”
Lucien did as he was told, and a familiar blue-skinned alien appeared on the main holo display. His gray robes, forked crown, and other glowing gold accessories left no doubt as to who this particular Faro was. He gave them a charming smile.
“Hello again.”
“We surrender,” Lucien said.
The alien nodded. “Wise of you to do so. Deactivate your quantum jamming field and drop your shields. I’ll be aboard with a squad of Elementals as soon as you have done so. Don’t keep me waiting.”
King Faro vanished from the screen.
“Elementals?” Garek asked aloud.
“Their version of Paragon marines,” Jalisa suggested.
“This is our chance,” Tyra said. “Pandora, drop shields, but not jamming, and shunt all the power to the jump capacitors. Jump out to a random star as soon as you can.”
“Shunting power… everyone prepare for imminent destruction.”
Lucien felt an ominous shudder come through the deck, accompanied by a rising roar from the SISS; then a bright light suffused the deck as they jumped away. When the brightness faded, it was replaced by another type of glare—a cold blue star at close range.
“Sensors, report!” Tyra said.
“All clear, ma’am. We are in a stable orbit around Panda-2.”
Jalisa burst out laughing, and the others joined her, diffusing the tension of their near-brush with death. Then the lights died, and their laughter died with them. Silence rang in the perfect darkness of their suddenly derelict vessel.
Artificial gravity went out with the lights, and Lucien felt his stomach do a queasy flip in zero G. “Not such a clean break, after all…” he whispered.
A split second later, the lights flickered back on, but much dimmer than before. Gravity also made a slow return and stabilized at a fraction of a standard G.
“Engineering! What happened?” Tyra demanded.
“Power reserves are reading well below critical levels—less than one percent,” Garek replied. “We’re dead in space, running on battery backups. But all systems are still in the green. We got lucky. We’ll need at least four hours to recharge our capacitors, but after that we should be fine.”
“Great,” Tyra replied. “Pandora, how far did we jump?”
“Six point four light-years, ma’am.”
“Within spitting distance of the Faros’ fleet, then.”
“Aye, Captain. If you’d wanted me to calculate a more distant jump, you might have said so.”
“No, that’s fine, I’m just trying to take stock of our situation. How many other stars were in close proximity to our last stop?”
“That depends on your definition of close, ma’am.”
“Let’s define it as any star system that the Faros could guess we jumped to in the time that we had.”
“On average we can calculate one hundred and eighty four light-years per second. We took a fraction of a second to calculate our jump, but the Faros don’t know that, and they don’t know how fast our jump calculations
are. At minimum, they’d have to systematically search several thousand star systems in order to find us.”
Tyra breathed a sigh. “Good. Then chances are we’re safe for now.”
“We left our fighters behind,” Lucien thought to mention.
“That’s unfortunate, but they were only machines,” Tyra said.
Lucien winced and glanced at Pandora’s station, but she didn’t seem to have noticed Tyra’s blatant disregard for the bots piloting their fighters.
A glimmer of light caught Lucien’s eye, and his gaze followed it out the viewports, to the stars. His eyes found a bright orange speck, a planet, not a star. What kind of world was that? Might it be habitable? Alien whispers skittered through his thoughts, conjured in the darkness of his imagination. He smiled at his own whimsy, but curiosity urged, tugging him out into the unknown. That planet seemed to be compelling him to visit, as if it were living thing reaching out to him across the void. Maybe they’d meet another sentient species here?
“We’ve got four hours to kill…” Lucien said. “Maybe we should explore this system?” It didn’t sound like something he would say, and he frowned at himself the moment he said it. The smart move would be to stay on board the Inquisitor and wait, in case the Faros found them. And yet, he felt inexplicably compelled to explore. But maybe that wasn’t so strange. Their mission was all about exploration. Doing nothing for four hours when they could be setting foot on alien worlds seemed like a gross waste of time.
Lucien turned to Tyra, tearing his gaze away from that orange planet with a physical effort. Suddenly he noticed how quiet the bridge had gotten. Everyone on board was staring fixedly out the viewports, as if mesmerized. A sudden thrill coursed through Lucien, prickling his skin. Maybe something really was calling out to them.
“Yes…” Tyra said, nodding slowly. “I think maybe we should. Pandora, you have the conn.”
“Yay,” Pandora said.
Tyra ignored the bot’s sarcasm. “Everyone else, follow me to Shuttle Bay Two.”
* * *
“They’re all lifeless rocks,” Jalisa said from the co-pilot’s seat of the shuttle.
Lucien nodded. “Lifeless might even be too kind for these planets.”
“That’s not surprising,” Tyra replied, leaning over their shoulders to get a look at the scan data. “We jumped to this star system at random, not because we detected it had planets in its habitable zone. Still, it’s worth exploring some of these worlds…. who knows what we’ll find?”
“Well you’ve got a nice selection,” Lucien replied. “There’s hot rock A, cold rock B, or gas giant C, and more variations of the same.”
“What about that one,” Tyra said, pointing to the warmest of the cold rocky planets—Panda-2D, a bright orange planet.
Lucien felt an inexplicable sense of relief. He hadn’t wanted to say it, but that was the planet he really wanted to visit. Something about it was impossible to ignore, as if it were somehow vitally important. Lucien brought up the scan data with trembling hands, and Tyra read the report:
“It has a nitrous atmosphere with traces of methane and ethane… an acceptable fraction of standard gravity, and—aha! It’s at least 50% water ice. Sounds perfect.”
“The atmosphere won’t be breathable, and you won’t find any liquid water,” Lucien said.
“We might find liquid water beneath the crust if the planet has a hot core,” Tyra suggested. “Or if we find the water is part of a eutectic system.”
“A what?” Lucien asked.
“Two substances mixed together, like salt and water. Salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water.”
“Well, salt water won’t cut it,” Jalisa said. “The surface temperature looks to be around ninety degrees kelvin on the day side.”
“That’s minus one hundred and eighty-three degrees Celsius,” Tyra said, nodding.
“We’d better hope our suit seals hold,” Lucien said.
“Plot a micro-jump into orbit and land us in the warmest spot you can find,” Tyra replied. “We’ve only got four hours to explore before the Inquisitor is ready to jump again.”
“We could save time by jumping straight down into the atmosphere,” Lucien suggested. “There’s no magnetic field to stop us.”
“Too risky,” Tyra replied. “Better to make a proper descent.”
Lucien nodded, already calculating the jump into orbit. “Next stop… Snowflake.”
“A good name for it,” Jalisa said.
“Better than Panda-2D, anyway,” Tyra added.
Chapter 22
The shuttle shuddered violently as they descended into the orange haze of Snowflake’s atmosphere. The atmosphere was thick, making it look like an orange gas giant from orbit, but at just 6500 kilometers in diameter, the planet was far too small to be a real gas giant.
Visibility decreased progressively on their way down to the surface, so they had to rely on sensors to see.
“The surface topography is interesting,” Jalisa said. “There’s mountains, canyons, lakes, rivers…”
“Mountains means there’s geological activity of some kind,” Tyra said from where she stood looking over their shoulders. “Maybe cryovolcanic activity from a subsurface ocean. If that’s the case, then it’s possible we could find something alive in that ocean.”
“So we’re chasing alien sea monsters,” Lucien said.
“Something like that.” Tyra pointed to the topographical map on one of Jalisa’s displays. “See if you can set down on the shore of that methane ocean.”
“An ocean of methane… isn’t that dangerous?” Jalisa asked. “We’re talking about natural gas. One spark and… boom.”
Tyra laughed. “Good luck making a spark. Without oxygen in the atmosphere nothing can burn.”
“But you said the planet is half water,” Lucien put in. “There’s oxygen in water.”
“I’m talking about elemental oxygen in the atmosphere,” Tyra replied. “And there’s not enough of that for us to worry. Trust me, if that ocean could ignite, it would have done so long before we got here.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Lucien said, and banked toward the ocean.
They landed just fifty meters from the shore, but it was impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. The shuttle’s landing lights illuminated the dark yellow-orange murk, revealing dirty, whitish rocks and black sand.
“Looks delightful out there,” Lucien said.
“It’s all just rocks and sand,” Jalisa said, her nose wrinkled.
“You were expecting frozen fields of grass?” Tyra asked, her eyebrows raised.
“I think I’ll stay here, if that’s okay with you,” Jalisa replied.
“Suit yourself,” Tyra said. “Lucien?”
He nodded and stood up from the pilot’s chair. “We came all this way to see an alien ocean. I’d be remiss not to go for a swim before we leave.”
“Good luck! Liquid methane is less than half as dense as water. You’ll sink like a rock,” Tyra said on their way back through the cabin.
Lucien spied Garek and Addy sitting together in the back of the shuttle. Addy’s hand was resting on Garek’s arm. A flash of jealousy coursed through him at the sight of that.
He was surprised by his reaction. He’d turned Addy down, not the other way around, so why was he jealous?
“You two coming?” Tyra asked, nodding to Garek.
“Sure,” Garek said through a dry chuckle at something Addy had whispered in his ear.
Addy sauntered up to Lucien with a smile. “Something wrong, XO?”
“No, why?”
“You had a funny look on your face. Still do.”
Lucien turned to the shuttle airlock. Tyra was already waiting inside with her helmet on.
“I’m fine. It’s time to go,” he said, and headed for the airlock, putting on his helmet as he went.
* * *
Lucien could feel the cold reaching for him through h
is faceplate. The chill was seeping in, a primal, unstoppable force, despite the fact that he’d turned his suit’s heater up to the max.
He shivered, and looked around. Chunks of dirty white rock lay everywhere. His suit’s scanner identified those rocks as chunks of ice. He picked up a pair of ice shards and struck them against each other, but nothing happened. No shattering, no chipping.
Tyra looked over at him. “At these temperatures the ice is as hard as rock,” she explained.
Lucien nodded slowly, as if he understood how that was possible. Black sand skrished under his feet, glittering in the pale yellow-orange light.
“Then what’s the sand?” he asked. Normal sand was made of grains of silicate rock that had been filed away by weather and water, but if these rocks weren’t rocks, then…
“The sand is hydrocarbon precipitation from the atmosphere,” Tyra said.
That sounded vague enough that it could be just about anything. Humans were hydrocarbons, so for all they knew they could be kicking around the ashes of some long-dead alien civilization.
Just so long as they’re not Faro ashes, Lucien thought. His skin prickled with goosebumps at the memory of those blue-skinned aliens. He felt an urgent need to turn around, to make sure nothing was creeping up behind him.
Listening to those instincts, he casually turned around, but he couldn’t see anything behind him, or anyone—just an impenetrable wall of orange mist. Even the shuttle had vanished into this planet’s murky atmosphere. Turning back to the fore, he realized he couldn’t even see Tyra anymore. The comms were disturbingly silent, too.
Panic gripped him, and his heart thudded in his chest. His breath reverberated loud and uneven inside his helmet, fogging the faceplate faster than the suit heater could clear it.
Drawing on his training, Lucien pushed down those feelings and activated a sensor overlay to pinpoint the others’ locations on his ARCs. Green-shaded outlines appeared, less than a dozen meters away, visible even through the murky atmosphere. But he still couldn’t hear them.
Then he thought to check his comms settings. He was still on the command channel. As soon as he switched to the away team’s channel, comms chatter immediately flooded his ears.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 14
