“Come on,” Liam said. “We need to go.”
He grabbed Saturn’s arm and led her down the corridor, stepping over metal grates and dodging hanging ductwork disrupted during the explosions. Ju-Long Ma followed close behind, still putting pressure on his wound and yelling obscenities over the alarms.
“We’re going to die,” Ju-Long cried.
“No we’re not,” Liam replied. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Captain said to man the lasers.”
An explosion rang out overhead before being muffled by the vacuum of space. They didn’t have long before life support gave out and Liam wasn’t about to die there. Not without a fight and definitely not in space.
“If you want to stay no one’s stopping you,” Saturn said, turning to Ju-Long with the hint of a smile.
They made a right and descended a metal ladder to Cargo Bay One. The mining craft had several small ships suited to scouting asteroids, none much larger than the shuttle with which he used to freelance. It might have measured twenty-five meters wide by fifty meters long and was a piece of crap, hardly capable of two hundred thousand KPH on a good day. It had a sleek shape with wings that curved down almost to the landing gear, fitted with hooks along with the nose to attach to an asteroid on three points.
Liam pressed his thumb on a panel attached to the landing gear and a ramp descended, unfolding like a drawbridge. They climbed up the platform into the small craft’s hold. The ship was not meant for carrying cargo per se, more like small samples, not leaving much room to move around. Ahead was a passage that led to the cockpit while the engine room was situated toward the back of the craft.
“Ju-Long, do you mind?”
He shook his head. His face looked a little pale but he said with a serious voice, “No, I’m on it.”
Ju-Long jogged toward the rear of the ship to the engine room, for once not making a crude remark or losing his cool.
“You remember how to fly one of these?” Saturn asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
There was a rumble overhead as yellow crates of ore toppled off their pallets outside, landing near the ship. Liam cursed and made his way to the cockpit. He knew that if they took another blast like that they weren’t going anywhere. The ship’s main corridor was short and thin, with barely enough room for Liam to walk upright. The interior of the ship was utilitarian, with plain metal walls that were smooth to the touch. Everything inside was made compact for short missions.
When Liam and Saturn reached the cockpit, he sat down in the pilot’s seat and strapped himself in. He held his hand over the control panel, prompting it to wake up from hibernation. Saturn took the seat to his left, buckling in for the ride.
Liam touched a button on the panel and opened a link to the engine room. Over the din he asked, “Ju-Long, how are my engines?”
He could hear several words he knew to be Chinese curses come over the audio link.
“Almost,” Ju-Long finally said. “There. Good to go.”
Liam could hear the sound of the ion engines jumping to life, a dull hum in the cockpit but a deafening roar in the engine room. Liam cut the audio link and took hold of the joystick, pulling back and feeling the landing gear leaving the cargo bay floor. He pointed the ship toward the bay doors and sent a signal for them to open. Nothing. Through the side window Saturn pointed at Captain Truong, a squat Asian man with a stark white uniform. He spoke into a handset and his voice came through their consoles, “That’s far enough, Kidd.”
“Shit, how’d he know?” Saturn asked.
Liam shrugged, pressing a couple buttons on the control panel and opening a channel. Two lasers dropped from the bow of the craft, pointed at the bay door.
“Stand aside, Captain. Unless you want to take a spacewalk.”
“Vesta Corporation will not rest until we find you,” the Captain said viciously. “You’ll work the mines for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Liam said before cutting the audio link.
Liam charged the lasers, prompting Captain Truong to scramble past the airlock to safety. That was the smartest thing Liam had ever seen him do.
“Ready?” Liam asked Saturn.
“Ready.”
Liam fired, shards of metal blasting out into space as all of the air was sucked out of the cargo bay. Crates went flying, bouncing off the hull of their ship, until a berth wide enough for them to traverse opened. Liam kept the small craft level as the objects passed them, using the reverse thrusters to keep from being pulled out of the ship. The last thing he wanted was to catch a wing on one of the side walls. Liam moved the joystick with his right hand and slid his fingers forward on the control panel with his left, accelerating as they crossed the threshold into space.
6
Liam maneuvered the small mining ship along the long edge of Vesta Corporation’s craft, cutting his hull lights and flying in the shadows between the vessel and the asteroid. In a moment they’d passed the edge, cruising over the dark asteroid. Away from the mine the artificial gravity was only sufficient enough to let them know which way was up and down, relative to the field generator. It was an odd feeling after the relative normal gravity on the mine.
He opened an audio channel to the engine room, the roar of the ionizers piercing through the speakers. “Ju-Long, what’s your status?”
“The last burst has us holding steady at two hundred thousand.”
“Can we go any faster?”
“I wouldn’t advise it, we took some superficial damage in the cargo bay, we could break up.”
Liam cut the link and looked up at the unclassified ship. Upon closer inspection, the alien craft was easily a few kilometers long. On the control panel he looked at the rear camera feeds. The mining vessel’s sparse lighting revealed countless punctures from the laser attacks. The other ship was able to pierce clean through.
He looked to Saturn, who was getting her bearings on the control panel. It was obvious that she was used to being the one flying. It was dark in the cockpit, save for the faint glow of their computer screens. Saturn pulled down her jumpsuit’s zipper and freed her arms from its embrace. The faint blue glow bounced off her toned arms. The mine had that effect on people. Though Liam didn’t often look in the mirror, he was sure he’d gotten a bit more muscular. Another jet of green flashed in front of them, piercing the hull of the Asteroid mine.
“This ship will never make it back to Earth,” Liam said. “It’s only meant for scout missions, a few days, tops.”
“Well we can’t go up against whatever that thing is,” Saturn said, pointing to the unknown ship above them.
Liam thought for a moment. He’d seen a swirl of stars behind the other ship. He’d heard about those kinds of occurrences before, but never in his own solar system and only from theories. It was a wormhole, though. He was sure of it. Where it led was the big question. If they were to make it through to the other side, would there be more of those ships waiting for them? Would they even be in the same part of the galaxy?
Liam tilted the joystick back and a burst of air from under the nose of the scout ship forced them away from the asteroid, on course for the enemy spacecraft.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked.
“Trust me,” Liam said with a smirk. “Take the laser controls. Lock onto them and wait for my mark.”
Saturn cursed and swiped her hand over the control panel. The menu changed and a new set of commands were at her fingertips. She charged the mining lasers and held her finger over the trigger. Green lasers emanated from the other ship and glanced their bow. They were approaching the alien ship fast. Too fast.
Liam turned the joystick to the left and missed the jagged outer hull by what seemed like meters, coming about and maneuvering his vessel toward the rear of the enemy ship. A stray laser pierced their wing, the force spinning them around in a circle and veering them off course.
“Stabilizing jets!” Saturn yelled.
&nb
sp; With great effort, Liam reached the button on the console to self-stabilize and they leveled out relative to the enemy ship. He turned to Saturn, determined. “Take aim and fire.”
Saturn pressed the trigger and two blue lasers shot out from their nose, pointed down at the enemy vessel. After a few seconds, Saturn cut the lasers. She examined the readout on the control panel.
“The sensors say we hardly made a scratch. Whatever it’s made of, the computer doesn’t recognize it. Some unknown alloy.”
“We can’t take another blast like that, I’m punching it.”
Liam used his left hand to slide along the control panel, increasing the output of the engines. Their seats began to rattle as they picked up speed. They wouldn’t be able to maintain their acceleration for long before they fell apart.
“What are you doing?” Saturn asked. “Ju-Long said—”
“I know what he said.”
Liam accelerated past three hundred thousand KPH, increasing in speed faster than he would have liked. Saturn tightened the straps around her shoulders and asked, “Where are we going?”
Liam pointed up ahead to the swirl of stars behind the enemy vessel. “There. Three thousand kilometers.”
“What is that?”
“If it’s what I think it is, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Ju-Long came in over the speakers.
“Are you crazy, Kidd? We’re accelerating too fast, do you want to die?”
Green lasers shot up, missing the cockpit by a meter as Liam shifted out of the way. Liam cut the audio feed and noted that the enemy lasers were far more powerful than their own, but they were hardly crack shots. If they were aliens, maybe they’d never seen another species’ spacecraft before. If that were the case, Liam wondered, why did they have such powerful weapons? Saturn examined the computer readouts on her panel and pointed to the screen.
“The computer is picking up life forms in the thousands. Whatever they are, they aren’t human.”
“Fifteen hundred kilometers,” Liam said.
“Did you hear me, Liam? Aliens.”
“Hey, if you want to get probed let’s slow down and chat about it, otherwise target their laser arrays and try to make a dent.”
Saturn clenched her jaw and slammed her finger down on the trigger, sending the dual lasers at the vessel below them. Liam cautioned a glance in her direction. Her brow was glistening with sweat, but her tan cheekbones picked up most of the light from the console, making her appear gaunt despite her normally athletic form. She turned, her dark ponytail lightly touching her shoulder as she examined Liam.
“If you want to get us out of this you’d better focus,” she said.
Liam’s gaze returned to the readings on his console. He turned the joystick sharply to avoid another laser blast. He read off the distance on his screen, “Five hundred kilometers.”
As they approached the vortex Saturn’s eyes grew. The closer they approached the more clearly they could make out the space distortions. Time seemed to slow down, as though Liam was hyper-aware of the things around him. The wormhole was massive, large enough for two of the alien spaceships abreast of each other. Saturn fumbled with the console and brought up the camera in the engine room. Ju-Long was making adjustments to the engine with a wrench, holding onto a stabilizing pole in the slight gravity field with his injured hand. She opened an audio link.
“Ju-Long, you might want to strap in.”
Ju-Long looked up at the camera and gave her the finger. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Three hundred,” Liam said.
The cabin began to rock more violently than before, making it difficult for Liam to keep the scout ship’s course true. Saturn wiped her forehead and pressed a button on the panel, projecting her image into the engine room. “Strap in, Ju-Long. Now!”
Ju-Long cursed and started toward the seat near the engine when a blast shook the room. He dropped the wrench and was pressed against the grates below.
“What was that?” Saturn asked.
“We’re hit!”
“How much farther?”
“One hundred. Fifty. Now.”
They were sucked in by the wormhole, spinning off their axis violently through what amounted to a corridor through space. There were flashes of multi-colored light as they appeared to pass countless stars and spatial phenomena. The corridor turned to a cloud of vibrant gasses, reminding Liam of the nebulas he’d seen in school. He remembered being a lot less nauseated in class.
“Can the computer tell how far it is to the other side?” Saturn asked.
“The sensors have gone haywire, we’re flying blind.”
The scout ship spun slightly off-kilter and Liam tried to correct the problem. They were losing hull integrity the farther they traveled. Up ahead he saw what looked like normal space approaching; a spot where the stars appeared to stand still. Liam’s stomach yearned for a level flight path.
It took three more minutes for them to reach the threshold. When they crossed, Liam eased off the controls and slowed the ship to two hundred thousand KPH. The cabin stopped shaking and Liam let go of the control stick.
“We made it,” Saturn said. “We’re alive.”
“You know what I say, always deliver more than expected.”
“For you that can’t be too hard.”
Liam smiled. This was the Saturn he’d missed for so long. Even in the face of danger she was cracking jokes and having a good time.
A heads-up display on the cockpit window materialized showing Ju-Long hanging onto a control panel in the engine room, bloodied from the ride and sporting a few new black and blues.
“In case anyone was wondering, I’m okay.”
He collapsed to his back on the grated engine room floor, groaning in agony. Liam smirked. Ju-Long was a tough guy, he would be all right. He tended to exaggerate to get attention anyway.
“Should we help him?” she asked.
“In a minute. I need to check something first.”
Liam brought up an orange hologram of a star map over the control panel. He put his hand out and manipulated the image, zooming out until most of the Milky Way Galaxy was in view. He pointed to one section and said, “That’s our solar system.”
“Where are we now?”
Liam fiddled with the controls and the computer examined the stars around them, searching for a point of reference. It took more than a minute for it to discern their location. The computer spun the image around and flashed their position in yellow.
“That’s impossible,” Liam said looking at Saturn in disbelief.
“What? How far?”
“If this is accurate, we’ve traveled more than ten thousand light years.”
7
“How can that be?” Saturn asked. “Nothing can travel faster than light.”
“We didn’t. It was a wormhole, connecting two points in space separated by thousands of light years.”
“Like a shortcut?”
“Like a shortcut.”
Liam sat back in his faux leather seat and took it all in. No human had ever traveled past Titan in their own solar system. It wouldn’t have been profitable. Now they were a third of the way across the galaxy in ship that could hardly go a fraction of light speed.
Saturn turned off the star map and crossed her arms. “If we never get back to Earth, I’m blaming it on you.”
Liam understood her frustration. He too was questioning his choice, but the alternative wasn’t any better. One bit of good news was that there weren’t any other ships on this side of the wormhole and the distortions behind them had ceased, closing the hole. Somehow he didn’t think Saturn would see the bright side at that moment. They sat in silence until a flashing yellow light lit up his console. He moved to press it and when he did, a hologram appeared of a beige sphere, patched with brown. Liam zoomed out and saw their flashing yellow position a couple million kilometers from the small world.
“What is that?” Saturn asked.
“A pl
anet. And close.”
“Do you think that’s where the other ship came from?”
Liam ran his fingers through his long blond bangs, which were still sweaty from their escape. It was a tough call, but there was one thing he knew for certain. Staying there wasn’t going to do them any good. Liam made a split decision and jerked the joystick, bringing the ship about so they were on a course for the planet. The bright rays of that solar system’s star peeked out behind the planet off in the distance.
“We have to try,” he said. “Are we in scanning range yet?”
“We need to be closer than one million kilometers for an accurate reading.”
Saturn pressed one of the controls and brought some figures up on the panel’s display. Liam watched the blue glow of the screen as several columns populated with data. Saturn pointed at the screen and said, “From here all we can tell is that the atmosphere is comprised of nitrogen, oxygen, and trace amounts of other elements, but not enough to be toxic in the short term. We should be able to breathe.”
Liam locked in the auto-pilot and unbuckled his straps. The last laser hit had taken out their small gravitational field generator, leaving them weightless. He floated out of his seat and used his hands to guide himself to the back of the cockpit, where he examined a control screen. He took images from the forward camera and blew them up on the display. The surface was mostly brown but gave off a slight yellow glow from the atmosphere.
“It looks rocky. Maybe a desert.”
Saturn unstrapped herself from her seat and floated in place. She guided herself over to Liam, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. “It will take almost twelve hours at our current rate of acceleration. We should try to assess the damage.”
Liam nodded and swiped his hand an inch over the panel. An image of the scout ship appeared as a grey outline with flashing orange sections where damage was present. Their nose was scraped up pretty bad and there was minor structural damage in patches around the ship. Nothing was as bad as their starboard wing. It wasn’t necessary in space, and they could get by flying on Earth, but he wasn’t so sure about entering this planet’s atmosphere. If there were windstorms or if the atmosphere was too thick, they could run into some problems. Liam pointed to the wing on the screen. “What do you think?”
The Corsair Uprising Collection, Books 1-3 Page 3
