She raised her head. Now, what?
On her forward screen, three faint flares emerged from a distant dot, joined together and became a bright streak etched against a black backdrop. They came from the star system that Jensen had pointed at.
Jazz’s green eyes widened. “It’s headed this way.”
Jensen furiously queried the database on possible arrival time of the flare. After a time, he leaned back. “Unless it deliberately changes trajectory, it’ll miss us, but barely. However, I think we were meant to see it.”
Swinging around to face Elise, Tango asked, “Do you think it’s from the aliens who just attacked us?”
She blinked, trying to think. “I don’t know. Jensen, set up a course so the fleet misses that flare, but get close enough to analyze it.”
Tango stared at the image. “Do we go in?”
Elise stared off into the distance. “That flare could mean anything. This is so far from the world we just observed that I’d say it’s something different.”
Tate gathered his composure with the challenge of a puzzle. “Actually, it’s transmitting a code.” He paused. “There’s something familiar about it.” He wiped his face across a sleeve and leaned forward to listen. “I’ve heard it before. Dad told me about it.”
She had asked for a sign, and here it was. Dare she act on it? Time to roll the dice. She straightened in her chair, taking a breath. “First, we’re going to hold a brief memorial service. When that’s done, we’ll head for that system.” Another memorial service. Her voice caught, but continued, “Jazz, tell Carter to ready more probes. I want to know what we’re getting into. Jensen, get your team to plot us a course. Give that system a label so we know what we’re talking about.”
Jensen swung back around, tapping Dane on the shoulder. Two blond heads bent in concentration.
She stared at her screen. Worlds far away whirled before her but not out of reach. What would they hold?
***
Several shifts later after final reports on casualties, and a touching memorial, the fleet headed out. The pain in her heart subsided into a dull ache, overshadowed by the necessity for action. She had no time to wallow in regrets, but flashes of sharp grief cut unexpectedly into her thoughts. As they accelerated forward, the debris from the exploded ships faded behind her.
Her memories didn’t.
Jensen rose up, tapping his board. “We investigated the region where the flare originated. We’re waiting on another dip on the spectrograph to confirm, but it looks like a planet, and the wobble it exerts, suggests it’s Earth-sized. Fourth from this type of sun says it’s within the Goldilocks Zone with a breathable atmosphere. We’re calling it LC7788.” Jensen’s bright blue eyes sparkled.
Tango turned in his seat. “Something sent that flare. Was it an attack or a signal?”
“When does it pass us?” Elise leaned forward.
Rubbing his face, Jensen answered, “Depends. We’re still out a long way.”
Dane’s voice grew excited. “One jump, maybe two, and we can be at the edge of the system. We can better evaluate atmosphere, electromagnetic waves, temperature, landmass, and any lifeforms.”
“If this is that creature’s world, they could send more ships after us,” Elise countered.
Tango shrugged. “We’re too far out for them to effectively mount an attack without us getting an advanced warning. Besides, they came from that other world. I don’t think this is theirs. And if there’s a problem, we jump out again.”
Gads, and then what? That last Jump had been a disaster
However, she hadn’t signed up for this voyage because she was afraid of risk. Hell, no. She’d wanted a new world to live on–a place for humanity to expand. And the world in front of them looked promising. As she stared at the shining star, it beckoned to her. She knew there was no rational explanation, but she felt the flare was a message meant for her. Sometimes a hard-headed Captain had to follow her gut.
With renewed determination, she turned to Tate. “Contact all ships. Tell them to prepare for Jump. Tell them we’re headed in for LC7788.”
Tate nodded and got busy on comm. Jensen and Dane clapped each other on their shoulders while Tango let out a “Yahoo!”
They would go in spite of the risks, and stars knew what awaited there, but they would go anyway.
Chapter 39
Taking on Risk
Jump—not Elise’s favorite maneuver. A barely controlled leap across a vast amount of space. Often dangerous. Who was she trying to kid? It was always dangerous.
Three shifts later, Elise found herself staring across the bridge and noticing how tired her whole crew looked—as tired as she felt. “Jazz, get Jimbo or Carter on the line.”
“Carter?”
“Yes.” With that comment, Elise realized that she wanted to talk to Carter. Oddly, he was still single. He had no wife, not even a girlfriend that she knew of. Suddenly, she wanted to see him. She had recently lost two dear friends and wanted his solid comfort near her. Maybe because of the jump and the risk it posed, she wanted to tell him that she loved him and not regret that it had been left unsaid. Fear sometimes made you want someone to hold you. Danger made you evaluate your life for the important things. She realized she wanted the comfort of his presence.
Her comm line blinked.
“Jimbo on the line.” Jazz pointed to the flashing green light.
Elise linked in.
“Greetings, Captain. What can I do for you?”
“That star system, LC7788, is too far away to reach anytime soon unless we jump. But I don’t want the fleet landing in the middle of a sun. Up until now, our jumps have been executed more out of panic than thoughtful calculation, resulting in us landing in unknown regions, accompanied by unacceptable losses. Can we control our next jump any better?”
“Well now, that’s a question.”
She rolled her eyes and drummed fingers on the armrest as she waited for his response.
“We can position the gate to open in a certain direction and send us a designated way.”
“Can we shorten the distance?”
“So far five proton pellets is the formula, but if we used only two …”
“Would that provide enough energy to propel us through the gate?”
“Carter might know. I’m an engineer, not a physicist. He’s the expert on Jump.”
“But you can position a gate so that it faces a given direction and sends the fleet that way?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you, Jimbo. Captain out.”
Elise glanced across the bridge. “Tag?” The young clone looked up, anticipation in his eyes. He’d been asking for helm responsibility, and finally the time for him to prove himself was at hand. “You have the helm. Head toward, what’s it called?”
Excitement erupted on his face. “LC7788. Yes, Captain! I have the helm.”
“Why that designation?”
“The L and C stands for last chance. And seven and eight are lucky numbers.”
“Let’s hope so. You have the helm.”
“Yes, Captain. I have the helm.” He practically saluted. Her heart clenched. He looked and acted so much like a younger Tango. The duties of helm had squelched a lot of the fire from her first officer, or maybe family had just mellowed him. She’d missed that youthful energy, and now his clone brought it back to the bridge.
“Jensen, you have the bridge.” She cocked her head at Tag, signaling for Jensen to watch over the young clone and patted her seat. “I’m going to the engineering lab.”
Jazz smirked. “Carter’s there.”
“Oh, stop it, Jazz,” Jensen said. “Luttrell has warned every man away from the captain, and I would think your experience with Romeo Brad would have put you off indecisive men.”
Jazz flashed her bright greens at him and answered in an even and firm voice, “Oh, by no means. He’s dishy. Besides, we have an understanding. I still see him from time to time. You don’t expect me
to give up great sex for an indeterminate commitment, now do you?”
“Dishy? Great sex?” Jensen’s mouth dropped open.
Elise left her crew talking about the ship’s administrator. She didn’t need to hear any more. She could care less what her crew did on their personal time, and with whom, especially when it concerned Brad. He was a competent administrator, but he had a roving eye for the women, and she didn’t want to be part of the herd.
Although Elise’s muscles ached as she rose from the chair, by the time she reached the lab, they had limbered up and felt better. Climbing up to engineering left her a bit dizzy, however. She entered to see Carter and a young woman, their dark heads together over a computer tablet.
“Brilliant!” he enthused, giving the attractive female a kiss on the cheek.
Unexpected feelings of jealousy swept through her. She stopped, not knowing what to say when Jacob came striding in from a nearby lab.
“The expressions on your new robot are spot on and … Oh, hi, Captain.”
Carter jerked around. The young girl stood up, revealing herself to be Abbie, his sister. She could see the resemblance.
Elise almost laughed out loud at the relief she felt, but that turned to chagrin at the unsettled expression on Carter’s face. “Carter, can we talk?”
“Certainly, Captain.” He rose stiffly from the table as Jacob joined them.
She noticed streaks of gray in his hair too. Were they all getting old?
“We keep losing ships,” he said. “Resources are tight if you want weaponized robots. I’ll need more metal.”
“Yes, we need to find a place soon to replenish all resources, and that system looks promising.” She put her hands flat on the table and leaned toward him. “I want to jump there but not land in the middle of its sun.”
“No, not a good idea.” He wrinkled his forehead.
“Can you control the distance better? Jimbo says he can control the direction.” She pushed back hair and stared at him.
He scrunched up his face and hummed while tapping the table. Looking up at her, he finally said, “Possibly.”
“How?”
“We use a five pellet formula for current Jumps, but if we reduce that to two, it may shorten the distance substantially. Jumps usually land so far away that we don’t know where we’re going to end up. There’s a lack of control, both in distance and direction.”
“Will two be enough to propel us through? I don’t want the fleet stuck in a wormhole forever.”
“I think so. I can work out the calculations. We just need enough energy to create fusion.”
“I want to jump into that system in front of us.”
He smiled. “That’s where we’ll go, then.”
***
Darkness oozed all around Jacob, and then the world lit up. He couldn’t see. He was terrified. The ship was jerking back and forth, then it blew up…and began dissolving. Crashing down, he landed painfully on hard ground. Stunned, he lay staring at a ceiling as goosebumps skittered up and down his arms and chest. But the hard floor beneath him and the tangle of sheets brought him back to reality. He’d been dreaming again.
Abbie leaned over the edge of the bed and looked down at him. Gradually, his brain cleared and the frown on her face came into focus through the dim light.
But it had felt so real.
“Jacob, are you all right?” she whispered. Her concerned face peered down at him.
He managed to untangled the sheets and brace both hands under his body so he could clamber back into bed. Drenched in sweat and still shaking, he patted his pillow and turned to sit at the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.
“Did you have that dream again?” She slid over to give him room.
An embarrassed nod answered her. “I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute.” He rubbed his face, took a deep breath, and slid under the covers next to her.
She patted his arm. “It’s scary to cower in a pod while the ship jerks around, and weapons keep firing.”
“And people screaming all around you.”
“The worst is not knowing what is going on.”
“We lost five ships, Abbie. Five. Thousands of people died.”
“I know.” She patted again.
He nodded. “I expected my own death at any minute.”
“There’s nothing anyone can do from here. Nothing.” She rubbed his arm, attempting to soothe him. “We hold on. We put our faith in our Captain and the bridge. We hold on as best we can. We survive.”
He took her into his arms. She went willingly. Like all the others on the ship, he needed something to hold on to, and she needed to be held.
In the other room, they heard a whimper and rustling.
Abbie put a hand on him as he started to rise. “Hush now. Everything will be all right. Don’t wake Jennie. She’ll go back to sleep if you leave her alone.”
But he couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling for hours after, thinking about the pending Jump and the dangers of space and the dwindling fleet.
***
On the bridge, during the next shift, Elise squinted at the image of LC7788. Jensen and Dane had worked hard to put together a complete picture with estimated orbits of the planets and their moons. She knew Sol’s system had the Oort Cloud, and closer in, the Asteroid Belt. This system also had a ring of asteroids, and she didn’t want to land too near them. However, that still left a lot of empty space for the fleet to occupy. A lot.
Twenty-eight ships needed to push through a dangerous wormhole and arrive without destroying each other. Then, they had to avoid unknown planets with moons and debris rings—not to mention deadly radiation and electromagnetic fields that could disrupt ship electronics if they flew too close. Clusters of asteroids roamed the system and comets shot in from the dark beyond. All dangerous. But dangers they had faced before.
These worries plagued her. The morale of her fleet was on a hair trigger, and she didn’t blame them. We need time to lick our wounds and recover from shock. We need time to steel ourselves for yet another Jump.
Storage Locker has survived with the bulk of the cryo cargo, but resources were low.
She gave them enough time, but then through the morass of conflicting emotions, she made her decision. The world beckoned to her. So, finally, she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened her comm channel and issued her instructions. “Captains, make sure that engineering is aware that this is a two pellet formula. We don’t want any ships wandering off alone and far away from the fleet because they measured wrong. Also, make sure you orient your ship to face the targeted system. Stand by to receive jump formation from Tate.”
Then she contacted engineering. “Jimbo, align the wormhole. Face it toward the star system I designated. Are all systems go?”
“Affirmative, Captain.”
“Storage Locker, open the wormhole.”
Ahead, energies tore open the time/space fabric, revealing the circling corridor that would let the fleet leap forward into an alien star system, one that possibly contained sentient beings.
Elise leaned forward. “The fleet is readying for Jump.” She put all authority she could into her voice. “Tate, you’re responsible for giving each ship their cue.”
“Copy that, Captain. I’ll give them the go.”
“Jazz, inform the ship to ready for immediate Jump. Monitor all sections as we jump.”
“Copy that, Captain.” Jazz bent over her board and began to inform the ship.
Tate contacted each ship and linked to give instructions, jockeying the line into position.
The Valiant entered and disappeared. Bright Dream entered and disappeared. One by one, the wormhole swallowed her fleet. She wondered how they fared on the other side. What greeted them.
Finally, Tango signaled her. “We’re go for Jump, Captain. “The fleet has completed the process, and only The New Found Hope is left.”
“Jazz, inform the ship we are go for Jump.”
Through
her headset, she heard her comm officer alerting the ship, and then she braced herself. “Go, helm. Go for Jump.”
Outside the universe exploded in light.
Chapter 40
New World
They soared into the alien star system as the raw energy of Jump accelerated their speed. Luckily, this far out from the sun, vast distances stretched out between worlds.
The Jump’s exit deposited them just past the ninth planet in a twelve planet system. They assumed an inward path toward the yellow sun, not much larger than the one that circled their own Earth. Frozen methane lakes with temperatures no humans could survive covered the nearest planet. Around it circled four severely pitted moons with little discernible atmosphere.
Another ice world lay farther behind them and millions of miles to starboard. Behind that, even farther, but to port, two smaller frozen worlds circled closer to the outer boundary of the heliosphere.
A gas giant that could have been Saturn’s twin lay millions of miles ahead, the eighth from the sun. A wide two hundred-thousand-mile ring of rock and ice circled its center. One of its nine moons spewed out hot lava, the interior heated by the gravitational forces of the planet rubbing the moon’s tectonic plates together and creating internal heat. Another bright nearby moon spun about, covered in ice, but spewing out a plume of ice crystals from cracks at its southern and northern hemispheres. Elise decided to give the world with its nine moons a wide berth.
“Wow!” Tag let out an excited breath, echoed by Tango. “Sure is bigger than I expected.”
Jensen swiveled in his seat. “Things get bigger as you get closer.” He winked at Dane who was trying to stifle a snigger.
“I know that; it’s just…”
Clearing her throat, Elise said, “Watch your separation, Tango. We don’t need to crash into that moon because you’re gawking at a pretty planet.”
Tango rotated back to his board. “We’ve got several hundred thousand miles between us, Captain. Plenty of room, and I’m on it. This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”
“Too true, cowboy,” she acknowledged.
“I’m riding the helm, Captain. We’ll be good.” Tag dipped his head to focus on instruments, his shoulder-length hair swinging forward. He pushed back the intruding brown strands and secured them into a ponytail with a skinny cord grabbed from a drawer.
A World Too Far (Terran Trilogy Book 1) Page 24
