The Juggernaut (Tales from the Juggernaut: Act 1)

by Peter A Dixon

  "That is the Orion!" said Ellie.

  "He must have brought a test-flight forward. I didn't know he was making such good progress on the repairs!"

  The communication panel lit up again, an urgent and unwelcome reminder of the furious message waiting for him.

  "What do we do?" Malachi asked Tila.

  "Nothing. He can't stop us now," Tila said.

  "But he knows we're taking the ship to the Parador, and he knows you two are aboard when I promised him you wouldn't be. Now he knows I've lied to him he'll never trust me again. He will check the inventory when he lands and then he will find out I faked the records to get him to give me the money."

  "Can he cancel our Jump permit?" Tila asked warily.

  Malachi shook his head, his eyes never leaving the blank screen. His father was going to be beyond angry.

  "The credit chip is pre-paid. He can't stop the money now either."

  "Then we're ok? We can still go?"

  The Orion was closer now. Theo had moved the larger vessel across the launch bay doors to block their path. A skilled pilot could still get through the small gap that remained but Theo was counting on the fact that no one would be reckless enough to try.

  The Orion was now close enough that they could see Theo standing on the bridge watching them. Even from this distance he looked rigid with anger.

  "Malachi, he's going to cut us off," Tila pleaded.

  "But..."

  "Please Malachi, we're so close," Ellie added. "Please?"

  Malachi bit his lip as they drifted closer to the larger ship. He swallowed nervously and reached for the throttle.

  For one heartbeat Tila feared he was going to slow down, reverse course and tell his father everything. If that happened she wouldn't get this chance again. No one else would trust her with a ship and a mission like this. She knew it was an insane venture, but it was still important to her.

  She couldn't let it fail. Not now. She couldn't let Malachi turn the Rhino around. Even if he hated her forever this was something she had to do. Once they were outside the space dock they could fly away while she convinced him. If the Orion shut off their exit they would lose all the momentum which had brought them to this point. Theo would lecture Malachi, Malachi would cave, and Tila would have to give up her plan.

  Tila didn't like giving up.

  "It's now or never, Mal."

  She inched forward, looking for her chance take the throttle and the decision out of Malachi's hands.

  He will hate me forever but at least this way it will be my fault, not his. Some comfort.

  She grabbed the throttle at the same moment as Malachi. They locked eyes. Tila demanding. Malachi unsure.

  Then Ellie's hand appeared between them. She clamped her fingers over both their hands hand and shoved it forward, opening the throttle to full power.

  The engines sprang to life, the Rhino surged forward, and they flashed past the Orion. The last thing they saw of Theo was his shocked expression blurring with speed.

  "We're going!" she stated in an uncharacteristically firm tone which said 'don't argue'.

  They both stared at her, mouths open.

  "Woooooo?" she added.

  Seventeen

  Tila fell back in to her seat and shut her eyes. She opened them again slowly, afraid to look in case she discovered that what had just happened had not really happened. The air escaped her lungs in a rush. She didn't realise she was holding her breath.

  Malachi stared at the stars before them with a wide eyed stunned expression. He seemed transfixed by the view. He had paled, not at the closeness of their escape but at the sure knowledge that he was going to have to return and explain himself.

  Only Ellie seemed energised by the start of their adventure. "That was easy!" she said.

  Malachi made a small choking noise. "Easy?"

  "Don't worry Mal," she said, patting him on the head. "We can tell everyone I made you do it."

  "How could you make me? You're the least frightening thing I know."

  "I can be scary!"

  Tila smiled at the thought of Ellie being able to frighten anyone.

  "No, Ellie, you can't," she said, "But that's okay."

  "I can be if I want to be," Ellie muttered and dropped herself into the centre seat.

  "Now all we have to do is get to the Jump point," said Malachi.

  "So, it's over?" said Ellie.

  "Almost. The hard work is done. Things should be easier now, assuming we can find Tila's cabal of investors."

  Ellie leaned forward on the console and looked out at the stars. As excited as she was walk on a planet for the first time this was what she lived for; the eternal magnificence of the infinite night.

  "How long does a Jump take, anyway?" she asked.

  "Exactly?" said Malachi.

  "Sure."

  "Fourteen minutes and three seconds."

  "She said 'exactly', Mal." said Tila.

  Ellie sprawled over the star chart in the console's central display. Her head was propped up on one hand with her fingers buried beneath blonde hair She swept her other arm across the screen until she found what she was looking for. She planted a finger on their destination and facts and figures about Jenova began popping up on the display. She examined the screen.

  "So even though Jenova is sixteen light years from here it will only take fourteen minutes?"

  "And three seconds. That's right."

  "That's quite fast, isn't it?"

  "Umm...yes."

  Ellie touched another star in the opposite heading. "And what about this one, Selah. That's twenty light years away. That takes fourteen minutes too?"

  "And three seconds, yes."

  "So, would it take twenty-eight minutes and six seconds from Jenova to Selah?"

  "No, fourteen minutes."

  "And three seconds?" offered Tila.

  Ellie sat up. "That makes no sense, Malachi."

  "It's weird, I know, but that's how it works. It doesn't matter how far you go. It always takes fourteen minutes and three seconds."

  "But it's nearly twice as far! Are you sure?"

  "That's hyperspace physics for you, Ellie. It's just how it works."

  "So even if we went here," she picked a star at random, a white dwarf two hundred light years away, "It would still take fourteen minutes?"

  "And three seconds. Although we couldn't make it that far, anyway. Once you start trying to Jump more than twenty-five light years, even with a Beacon, the math becomes almost impossible. There's no telling where you might end up."

  "How do you understand all this and still have room in your brain for everything else you know?" Tila asked.

  "I'm an engineer, not an expert in hyperspace physics. I don't understand this, not really. That's just the basics everyone knows." He looked up. "Don't they?" he asked seriously.

  Tila and Ellie exchanged a look.

  "Yeah," said Tila.

  "Sure," said Ellie. "Of course."

  "Hmmm," said Malachi.

  "So how far away is the Beacon for Jenova?" Ellie asked as she flicked through different screen displays.

  "Not far at this time of year. Only a couple of hours."

  "Two hours? Why didn't they build it closer?"

  "Ellie, the Juggernaut orbits Celato. The distance changes all the time. You're lucky it's not a couple of days. Anyway, it's as close as it can be. Beacons can't be too far inside a star's gravity well or they won't work properly. Luckily, we have no planets so they built it closer."

  "Why does the star make a difference?"

  Smiling, Tila leaned over Ellie's ear while Malachi wasn't looking. "Here comes the lesson," she whispered.

  "I heard that. Because the gravity well of star or planet is so massive that Jump Beacons can't operate too far inside a system. Well, they can, but the Jumps become more dangerous. It's easy around Celato because the Juggernaut is pretty much the only thing in this system. Think of the star like the middle of a giant whirlpool.
Around Celato there is nothing to disturb the whirlpool except the Juggernaut and a few asteroids and comets. In other systems, each planet is trying to make its own little whirlpool of gravity. All those whirlpools overlap with each other and with their star, and that creates a disturbance in the uh, water."

  "Does Ellie even know what a whirlpool is?" said Tila.

  "I know! I've read books. Just because I grew up in space it doesn't mean I don't know anything," Ellie protested, then to Malachi she said, "So, it's sort of like 'space-water'?" said Ellie.

  "I guess," said Malachi.

  Tila patted Ellie on the shoulder.

  "He's good with the science but bad with the metaphors," she said.

  "He's not that bad. It makes sense to me now," said Ellie. "There's nothing in our system so it's like a smooth pond, but other systems have planets spinning in all directions so it's harder to find somewhere to make a landing because the gravity is disturbing the space-water?"

  "Uh...actually, that's pretty good," Malachi admitted.

  "Is it called a gravity well because of the space-water?" asked Ellie.

  "Not quite, El,"

  "So, you do understand everything about Jump Beacons too," Tila said playfully.

  "No, this is still only the basics. But you know that already, don't you?"

  Tila and Ellie looked at each other.

  "Yeah," said Tila.

  "Sure," said Ellie. "Of course."

  Eighteen

  The relatively short journey meant the risk of pirate attacks was minimal, and for once the limited value of their ship also counted in their favour. It was strange how something so prized inside the city was worth so little in open space.

  The rest of the flight to the Beacon was uneventful, even if Ellie considered sitting still the worst possible way to spend two hours of her life.

  It was a pause for breath between the thrill of the escape and the anticipation of the unknown still to come.

  Thirty minutes out from their destination they intercepted other ships travelling from the Kinebar Beacon. Together they formed a rag-tag caravan that stretched through space.

  Far behind them the Juggernaut had become only a dark spot transiting the large red orb of the sun.

  Identity codes and flight vectors of nearby craft popped up and vanished again on the navigational display before Malachi as ships entered and left the boundary of the Rhino's short range sensors.

  The display became steadily more crowded as they approached the Jenova Beacon.

  As it came into range a tight cluster of blips appeared on their scanner and began to dissipate at once. A Jump group had just arrived. The cluster split into two smaller groups of ships like a cell dividing. Each small fleet began the slow transit across the solar system to one of the other Beacons where they would continue to Selah or Kinebar, and then to who knew where.

  None of the arriving ships headed for the Juggernaut.

  Their own passage had already been arranged. Before they had left the city, Malachi had checked for traffic scheduled for Jenova and paid the required fees. The common-law of space travel was that no ship should refuse to provide support to any needy traveller. So, while the fees were expensive they were not crippling. The laws of supply and demand were in effect in deep space just as they were anywhere else.

  Fortunately, the Juggernaut was a well-travelled, if not well-loved, system, so there was rarely any problem in finding a Jump-capable ship willing to assist. Everyone understood the desire to leave.

  For now, he busied himself in the final preparations as Ellie gawped at the surrounding traffic. Tila sat alone in the rear cabin, anticipation gnawing at her insides.

  This is it, she thought as the Jump Beacon announced itself to their ship's systems, this is when it becomes real.

  The last few days had been anything but. In that time, her worldview had been turned upside down. Things of which she had once been sure had been brought into question, and now, in the moments before they left the system, this whole adventure felt real for the first time.

  She wondered again if it might have been better to take this journey alone. Malachi was risking a great deal by coming. She knew his help was going come with a price, not only in terms of his father's disappointment and anger, but also in real money – money he needed to keep the business alive and the family fed.

  The impact on his father's political reputation within New Haven would also be significant. Malachi was going to have a lot to answer for when he got back.

  And so am I. Theo, and everyone else, will know I'm the cause of this. But Malachi needs to go back. I don't. I'm not family. I can leave New Haven anytime I like if - no, when - it becomes too difficult for me to stay.

  It wouldn't be the first time.

  Am I being too selfish? Am I jeopardising his family, and Ellie's safety on nothing but a crazy plan?

  But then, I never asked him or Ellie to come. Ellie just wants to come for the adventure, I guess. Just a few days on a planet, and then home again. It's not much time. I hope she loves it. There's something about the open sky which people who have spent their whole life among the stars can find unsettling. Maybe she will be like that. I hope not. I don't need her crying to go back home before I finish what I set out to do.

  Maybe she shouldn't have come. She's just going to get in the way, I know it.

  When Tila emerged from her thoughts they were almost at the Beacon.

  Twenty kilometres in front of them one of the four vertex satellites drifted across their view in its perfect orbit. Each satellite formed one point of a precise four-sided pyramid. At the centre of the pyramid was the Nexus Beacon, the powerful supercomputer which coordinated and controlled each Jump.

  Each vertex satellite was exactly one hundred kilometres away from its closest neighbour, and the whole geometric arrangement spun slowly on all three axes around the nexus.

  Above them five small craft were forming up around their surrogate, a cargo ship named Neptune's Pearl. It was the same ship they had paid to be their own surrogate.

  Malachi responded to queries and instructions sent by the Pearl and carefully manoeuvred the Rhino into its designated position within the formation.

  Each ship hugged as close to the Pearl as possible to minimize the fleet's mass radius.

  Finally, he tapped a control to transmit their ready status and sat bolt upright in his chair, tensed and waiting for the Jump.

  Slowly, moving as if a single ship, the tight formation approached their departure point.

  "We're locked into their Jump calculations and slaved our manoeuvring systems to theirs," he informed the girls. "Now we wait."

  They didn't wait long.

  The console chirped an alarm to announce the initiation of the Jump sequence. The Rhino oriented itself along the vector of the Pearl, and the little ship's engines cut automatically.

  The scene around them trembled, and for the briefest of instants they had the impression of two star fields overlapping. It was like trying to focus on two different images simultaneously: one right in front of them and the other sixteen light years away.

  The portal blossomed from nothing in a dazzling burst of white, tinged with red. Neptune's Pearl led the way and vanished from view as if it had flown into the heart of a star. The other smaller vessels raced forward and disappeared, leaving behind them a faint red afterimage.

  The Rhino approached the event horizon. In Malachi's peripheral vision he saw the ship around him lurch awkwardly while the scene directly in front of him remained steady. He felt a twinge of motion sickness as his brain wrestled with the contradictory information being delivered by his senses. He thought Ellie might be unnerved by the effects of a Jump in a ship as small as theirs, and he had warned her what to expect ahead of time, but she didn't seem anxious at all, just excited. It was Tila who seemed tense and uncomfortable in the final moments.

  Ellie sat in one of the co-pilot chairs with her feet on the controls. She couldn't remember ever
feeling happier. She had left the Juggernaut for the first time. She was in a stolen ship (she told herself this made it more exciting), and she was with the two people she cared most about in the universe.

  Nothing can go wrong, she thought to herself. I hope we can find what Tila's looking for but even if we can't help her I'm going to land on a planet and look up at a sky for the first time.

  "Here we go," she whispered to herself. "Now or never."

  Malachi settled back into his own chair, gripping the arm rest with his right hand so no one could see how nervous he was.

  I hope I'm doing the right thing. It feels right and wrong at the same time. I've never defied my father like this, but then no one has ever needed my help like this before. This could all go wrong in a big way.

  I hope this journey is worthwhile. I want Tila to find the answers she's looking for. She deserves it, if anyone does. She has the reputation of a loner but she's put her life on the line for other's before. Ellie knows that better than anyone. This is the least we can do for her.

  Mostly I hope we are long gone from Parador before trouble finds us.

  Tila sat in the centre chair, commanding the clearest view of the great portal which filled her horizon.

  She stared straight ahead at the white hole, wreathed with stars, into which they were about to plunge. Despite having friends on either side, she wrestled with her feelings alone.

  It wasn't hope she felt. There was no way to change the past. The Far Horizon had vanished and the New Dawn and Rising Star were destroyed. Her parents were responsible for the mission and so they took the blame when it failed. That was the story people remembered; that the man responsible for the technology, and the woman commanding the fleet, her father and mother, were the two people most at fault when it failed.

  But that's what I can change. I can't change the past but something else happened that day. It might still be happening. Someone had buried a secret about the mission, and it cost people their lives. I have the proof of that, and I'm going to find out the rest. I want to know. I need to know.

  Then it was the Rhino's turn to enter the portal, and their ship flashed out of existence.

  Tila realised at last it wasn't anticipation which gnawed at her stomach.