The legend of Corinair tfs-3

by Ryk Brown

  The legend of Corinair

  ( The Frontiers saga - 3 )

  Ryk Brown

  Ryk Brown

  The legend of Corinair

  CHAPTER 1

  The mood on the bridge was still tense after their battle with the Ta’Akar warship while orbiting the small Haven moon. Although their current position put them a good thirty light minutes away from the warship’s last known position, there was still the chance that their opponent might deduce their location and come after them in the very near future.

  Because of this, Abby kept updating the escape jump plot every few minutes. In her spare time during the harvesting operations back in the rings, she had written an algorithm that would easily update the transition parameters and adjust the jump plot based on a given course and speed. It might be a little less accurate-she hadn’t had time to validate the results-but as escape jumps were plotted to wide open areas, any slight discrepancies posed little risk, especially at such short distances. She would’ve preferred to be more accurate in her calculations, but the current situation seemed to favor speed over precision. As a scientist, it had been a difficult adjustment. Superluminal transitions required exact calculations. But as a wife and mother who desperately wanted to return to her family, she had found a way to overcome her aversion to shortcuts.

  Tug and Jalea came out of the captain’s ready room and were about to exit the bridge, when Nathan came out of the ready room behind them.

  “You might want to stay and see this,” he said to Tug as he passed. “Abby,” he called as he stepped from the exit foyer onto the aft section of the bridge. “Commander Taylor says we’re ready to jump to a safer position outside the system.”

  “Yes, Captain. To roughly the same position that we originally jumped in from, give or take a few hundred kilometers.”

  “Very well. Prepare to jump,” he ordered as he stepped aside to allow Jessica to take her position at the tactical console.

  “Shall I kill the view screen?” Cameron asked as she sat down at the helm.

  Nathan looked at Tug as he stepped up beside him near the tactical station. “Leave it on,” he told her, a slight grin creeping across his face.

  Cameron looked puzzled. “Sir?”

  Nathan ignored her, instead speaking to Tug. “This is a graphical plot of the system,” he explained, pointing at the main display at the center of the tactical console. “This is our current position-about thirty light minutes from Haven. We’re going to execute a jump that will move us to here.” Nathan moved his finger along the display all the way to the right, nearly to the edge of the map before double tapping the screen to emphasize the spot. “That’s about two light days from Haven.” Tug looked intently at the display, comprehending its simplistic representations in short order.

  “I see. And this will happen in an instant?” The skepticism was clearly evident on Tug’s face.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve done it six times now, and even I still can’t believe it.” Nathan turned to Abby at the jump control console on the starboard side of the bridge. “Doctor Sorenson? If you’d be so kind…”

  “Executing jump,” she replied calmly.

  “You might want to cover your eyes,” Nathan told Tug.

  Tug ignored him, wanting to witness the entire event. He stared at the main view screen, which wrapped around the entire front half of the bridge and up over the helm and command chairs located just in front of them. Only a moment after the physicist initiated the jump, a pale blue wave of light began to spread out from emitters located all over the hull of the ship. It seemed to dance across the hull as each wave of light reached out to connect to the ones next to it. As the waves of light made contact with one another, their brilliance increased immeasurably and they quickly grew into a blinding white flash of light. A moment later, after the flash subsided, the stars had shifted ever so slightly.

  Tug rubbed his eyes, the flash of the jump leaving his vision littered with pale blue blotches that floated before him. He blinked repeatedly, squinting his eyes and then widening them again as if trying to clear something from under the lids. Something on the screen was different. To most people, the stars displayed on the view screen would still have looked the same. But for a man that had navigated them from the seat of a small fighter on numerous occasions, even the slightest change was noticeable.

  Tug muttered something in his native tongue. Nathan could only guess at its meaning-“Oh my God”, or “holy shit”. He was sure it was one of those two. Tug looked back down at the tactical display, locating the icon that marked their new position. It was just as Nathan had said-they were two light days away from Haven. Tug stared back up at the stars on the viewer once again. “Incredible,” was the only Angla word that came to him. He turned to Nathan. “Absolutely incredible. It is no wonder that the Ta’Akar wish to capture your ship.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Nathan said. Tug’s last statement had knocked Nathan out of the wonder of the moment, and back to the matters at hand. “Kaylah, any contacts out here?”

  “No sir,” the ensign responded from her place at the sensor console to his left. “The area is clear. In fact, by direct imaging, it appears as if we haven’t even entered the system yet.”

  “Huh?” It wasn’t that Nathan didn’t understand what she was talking about-it was that he hadn’t expected it.

  “The light is two days old,” Cameron added. “It takes some getting used to.”

  “Yeah,” Nathan agreed.

  Tug understood only too well, and was already analyzing the prospects in his mind. “Captain, do you realize the tactical advantages such a technology provides. Not only could you jump into range of your targets with complete surprise, but you could escape before help could arrive. And the reconnaissance possibilities-”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Nathan warned. “We haven’t committed to anything just yet. We’re just entertaining the possibilities at this point.”

  “But Captain-”

  “This drive is just a prototype-it’s experimental. There’s a lot it can’t do. And so far, we know very little about what it actually can do. So let’s just take it one step at a time, shall we?”

  Tug regained his composure. “Of course, Captain.”

  “In the meantime,” Nathan continued, “why don’t you get your family settled into quarters. It’s been a difficult day.”

  Tug looked around the bridge and then back out at the stars on the viewer. “Amazing,” he muttered, shaking his head. He nodded to Nathan as he turned to exit. “I’ll be available when you need me, Captain.”

  “Thank you.”

  Tug returned to the back of the bridge, exiting out the port doorway with Jalea at his side. Nathan watched as they walked away, discussing what Tug had just witnessed for his first time with Jalea, again in a language that Nathan could not understand. He was beginning to think that if they were to spend much more time in this region of space, he might need to learn at least some of their language.

  Cameron rose from her seat at the helm and stepped onto the upper level that encompassed the back half of the bridge. “So what do we do now?”

  “We still need someplace safe to make repairs.”

  “Preferably someplace safer than Haven,” Cameron replied with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Hey, we got some molo?” Nathan quipped.

  “Yeah, and a bunch of rocks,” Cameron added. “That reminds me, what are we going to do with all those workers stranded on board?”

  The expression on Nathan’s face made it evident that he had not considered that problem. “I don’t know. I guess I’d better have a talk with them.” Nathan turned to Jessica. “Can you round them all up and
have them in the briefing room, in say, thirty minutes?”

  “Sure thing,” Jessica answered as she turned to exit.

  “How long do you think we can hang around out here?” Cameron asked.

  “We’re probably okay for a day or so,” he admitted. “But to be honest, the sooner we get a few light years between us and Haven, the happier I’ll be.”

  Nathan and Jessica entered the main briefing room located one deck below the command section. Large enough to hold fifty people in five rows, it seemed almost empty compared to how full it had been during his orientation briefing nearly a month ago. Now, it contained only a handful of strangers-aliens, in fact-who were stranded on board his ship with no way to return to their homes.

  Josh and Loki sat at the back of the room, their feet dangling over the chair backs in front of them. The two pilots of the now twisted and mangled harvester, still lying in ruins on the Aurora’s flight deck, seemed to be enjoying themselves, despite all they had been through over the last couple of hours. Marcus, the harvesting crew foreman sitting next to them, did not seem as entertained by the situation.

  The others, three men and two women, sat apart from the rest. They had all served as indentured workers under contract with the harvesting team that Tobin had hired during their brief stay in the Haven system. It appeared that they had no interest in socializing with the technical crew of their shared employer. They all appeared beaten and disheveled, having gone through more than a full day of labor, not to mention having watched their fellow workers die at the hands of Ta’Akar troops attempting to take over the ship. In fact, many of them still wore the blood of those who died around them during the slaughter.

  Nathan stepped onto the platform at the front of the room. He chose to stand beside the podium instead of behind it, not bothering with the public address speaker system built into the room. There were only a half dozen or so of them, and Nathan felt that a more intimate approach would be appropriate. In retrospect, he wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have the meeting in the command briefing room on the deck above, as it might have been better suited.

  “Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Nathan Scott, and I’m the captain of this ship. First, I’d like to express my condolences to any of you who have lost family or friends in the recent attacks that we have all endured. If there is anything that we can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.”

  “Can you get us home?” one of the men asked.

  “I guess that depends on where home is,” Nathan began.

  “Haven, of course,” the man insisted.

  Marcus shook his head, a sour expression painted on his weather-beaten face. “Haven ain’t no one’s home. Least ways not unless they’re touched in the head,” he chuckled.

  “It was my understanding that most of you were indentured workers, forced to serve against your will.”

  “That’s not entirely correct, Captain,” the man explained. “While we may not have chosen to be there, we were required by law to repay debts owed to our creditors, by either indentured labor or imprisonment.”

  Nathan looked perplexed. He hadn’t considered the possibility that any of the workers would want to return to Haven.

  “You can return us, can you not?” the man continued.

  “Well, yes, I suppose we could. It’s just that I can’t guarantee your safe passage back down to the surface.” Nathan felt all their eyes staring at him. “You see, there’s still a Ta’Akar warship in the area. I mean, we think that it’s still there. The images we’re getting right now are two days old.”

  “Excuse me?” It was Josh’s first words since Nathan had entered the room and began speaking. Nathan could tell by the looks on their faces that he was speaking for everyone in the room. “What do you mean, two days old?”

  “Well, that’s because we’re about two light days out from Haven right now.”

  “What?” Marcus interrupted. “That ain’t possible. I didn’t feel us go to FTL. And even if we did, ain’t no way we got that far out so quickly. Hell, it ain’t even been an hour since the shootin’ ended.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Josh suddenly realized. “And how the hell did you guys shake that Ta’Akar cruiser?”

  Nathan realized the conversation wasn’t exactly going in the direction he had intended. But the tone struck by Josh and Marcus, although probably not intentional, was a bit accusatory.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” Nathan offered, hoping to avoid the issue of how all together. Unfortunately, he could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren’t going to let it go that easily. And to make matters worse, the workers-whose interests had previously been separate from those of their higher-ups-were looking like they were about to unite with them. Nathan looked at Jessica as if hoping for a hint at what to say or do to appease the group.

  “Might as well tell them,” she said. “They’re going to find out soon enough.”

  “Well,” Nathan began, “we have a device-we call it a ‘jump drive’-that allows us to instantly jump to another point in space. We can jump up to ten light years at once.” Nathan looked at the group, all of whose mouths hung open. “So as soon as Josh and Loki got us back on board, we simply jumped away.” There was no response. A second later, not knowing what else to say or do, Nathan made a gesture with his hands of a ship jumping from right to left.

  “Bullshit,” Marcus replied after a moment of silence.

  Josh had a completely different reaction. “Hot damn!” he cried, the words nearly exploding from his mouth.

  “Why only two light days out?” Loki asked.

  “Well, to be honest, we were just trying to buy some time until we figured out what to do next,” Nathan admitted. He could tell from their expressions they were not following his logic. “You see, we’re not from around here.”

  “No kidding,” Josh chuckled.

  Marcus eyed Nathan suspiciously. “Where exactly are you from?”

  “Well, pretty far away.” Nathan took a deep breath. “Actually, we’re from the Sol system. A planet called Earth.”

  Most of their expressions suddenly changed from disbelief to shock. Except for Marcus, whose still appeared suspicious. “Earth? Even if it existed, ain’t it like a hundred thousand light years away or something? You said your drive thingy could only jump ten light years at a pop. What did you do, make a thousand jumps just to get to Haven?” Marcus laughed. The whole story, jump drive and all, sounded preposterous to him.

  “Well, how we got here is another story. One that I really don’t want to get into right now.”

  “Captain,” one of the workers interrupted. “If you jumped out here, can you not simply jump back and let us off the ship?”

  “Ain’t no way I’m going back to Haven,” Marcus announced. “You can drop me off anywhere but that rock.”

  “You were there by choice,” the men sneered at Marcus, apparently no longer fearing the wrath that the surly foreman had once used to keep them in line.

  “I was there for the money,” Marcus argued. “Which was damned good, by the way. But after today, who do you think the owner is gonna blame for losing a harvester and half his crew?” Marcus shook his head in defiance. “Uh-uh, I ain’t goin’ back there. Not after all this. And you’d all be smart to do the same.”

  “Yes, we could jump back and let you off,” Nathan began, choosing to ignore Marcus for the moment. “But I can’t guarantee the Ta’Akar would allow you safe passage. In fact, I rather doubt they would.”

  “And why is that, Captain?” Marcus challenged, standing to emphasize the urgency of his request.

  Jessica straightened up from her position leaning against the wall off to the side, sensing the tension rise in the room. She took a step forward, her body language communicating to Marcus her intent to impede him should he step out of line. Just as Nathan was about to respond, Tug and Jalea entered the briefing room.

  “Because of me,” T
ug announced in a commanding voice.

  “And who the hell are you?” Marcus asked, turning to glare at Tug and Jalea.

  “I am the leader of the Karuzari.”

  “The terrorists?”

  “They’re not terrorists, Marcus,” Josh argued, rolling his eyes. “They’re freedom fighters.”

  “I don’t care what you call them, kid. They’re still trouble. And it’s trouble that I don’t care to be associated with. And if I were you-” Marcus suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, as he started to put it all together. “Wait a minute,” he said, pointing a finger at Nathan. “Is this the ship that we heard about? The one that appeared out of nowhere and helped them Kazahooie escape?” Marcus looked around the room again, his mind racing. “Yeah, that would explain all the damage to your ship, wouldn’t it? And that would also explain why them Takar bastards came to Haven looking for you. Damn. On second thought, maybe it would be safer to return to Haven after all,” Marcus concluded, scratching his head.

  “He might be correct, Captain,” Tug began as he and Jalea continued into the room. “It might be safer for all of them to leave the ship as soon as possible.”

  “Not me,” Josh announced. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d just as soon stay right here. I figure you’re gonna need someone to pilot that shuttle anyhow.” Josh nudged Loki with his elbow.

  “Yeah, count me in as well,” Loki added, somewhat hesitantly.

  The offer surprised Nathan. The idea of adding civilians to his crew hadn’t occurred to him. But the idea, although somewhat unusual, wasn’t without merit. He was quite sure, however, that his XO would disagree. Complete with direct quotes from the regulations to support her objections. “Thank you,” he answered rather automatically, surprising even himself. “I just may take you up on that.”

  It surprised Jessica as well, her expression reflecting her doubt.

  “In fact,” Nathan continued, “if any of the rest of you care to help out, I’d be happy to consider your offers as well.”