Escape Velocity (The Quantum War Book 1)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  “The security doors don’t use biometrics?” Chris asked.

  “No. Wouldn’t work if you’re wearing space suits.”

  Of course. Chris felt immensely stupid. This was far out of his element. If only he were back on Juliet.

  Wyatt faced the station personnel. “How many people in Flight Ops?”

  The uninjured worker, a short, older man with a closely-trimmed mustache, stared straight ahead in silence.

  “Do you want to do this the hard way?” Wyatt repeated loudly. “How many people?”

  The worker stole a furtive glance at the RESIT patch on Wyatt’s vest. “I’m not talking to you.”

  “Fine,” Wyatt said. “Laramie, Kenny—stack up with Gav.” He turned to Chris. “Cover these guys for me, will you?”

  “Sure. Just a moment, though.” He felt the grin forming as he moved closer to the station worker. “Hey, tough guy.”

  Defiant eyes flicked over to him.

  In one motion, Chris grabbed the front of the man’s uniform and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose.

  Blood spurted into the air as he cried out in pain.

  Chris yanked him close. “Listen, pal. I’m in kind of a pissy mood right now. So, tell my friend how many guys are in that room before I start breaking things on you.”

  “Four,” the man said immediately. His hands clutched Chris’s tattooed forearm, waging a losing battle at getting free. “There’s four—”

  “Armed?”

  The man hesitated.

  Chris looked over his shoulder. “Weapons free, Lieutenant.”

  “Wait,” the man said quickly. “They don’t have weapons. Only security does.”

  “Good boy.” Chris twisted his arm free. “By the way, if you’re lying, you’re dead.”

  The space station worker glowered. “I’m telling the truth.”

  The whoosh of a breaking pressure seal filled the compartment. Chris watched as Wyatt and three other troopers moved up into the station.

  The rest of their entourage continued to enter the compartment. The space was getting crowded now, and Chris made sure to stay close to their prisoners. They didn’t look very tough, although the older man was clearly hostile. Chris didn’t mind. He was happy to beat the crap out of him if he had to. Just another plug against the establishment that was killing people on the planet below.

  “Make a hole,” came a voice from the docking boom. Teo appeared, switching back to talking on the comm. “That’s all we’ve got? Where’s William Tell and the others … no, I’m sure I can fly it … okay, we’ll make it happen.”

  “Everything all right?” the copilot asked.

  Teo’s face telegraphed his displeasure across the entire compartment. “Wyatt’s got control of Flight Ops. There’s only that one spacecraft docked. It’s an antique.”

  “How antique?”

  “Fission reactor, dual inline radiators.”

  The copilot frowned. “That’s … wow.”

  “Wow, what?” Chris asked, intrigued and worried at the same time.

  Teo shrugged it off. “That design is a good eighty years old. But it’s what we’ve got. It’ll be fine.”

  “Eighty? You’re kidding.” Chris grabbed the older station manager. “Where’s all the top-shelf stuff, eh?”

  Before the worker could answer, one of the great circular hatches on the far side of the compartment hissed and slid open. The corridor beyond was empty.

  “Wyatt’s opening the hatches to the freighter,” Teo said. “Let’s move.”

  Finn and Maya sandwiched their group and led the way. Chris drew his pistol and waved it at the prisoners. “You, too, tough guy.”

  They floated into another cylindrical pressure vessel that extended fifty meters away from the junction compartment. Cargo nets and storage lockers lined the walls except for a thin line of small windows on the right. Chris peeked outside and saw the curve of Juliet’s sunrise form a brilliant crescent against the darkness behind it.

  Up ahead, the windows revealed a large vessel connected to the station via another docking boom. It was the same freighter he had glimpsed from the orbital shuttle.

  Space wasn’t in Chris’s wheelhouse, but he knew his way around heavy equipment. The freighter stretched a maybe a hundred meters in length, with two large, conical EmDrive cones mounted inline at one end. Instead of a modern design where modular containers latched onto a central spine, this spacecraft had large cargo bays integrated directly into the superstructure.

  It looked like something out of a history book. The most contemporary piece of equipment visible was the docking mechanism.

  Chris turned to the mustached station manager, who by this point had finally managed to slow the blood gushing from his nose. Their eyes met and the older man winced.

  He jerked his chin toward the window. “What’s the story?”

  “It’s getting ready to be decommissioned.”

  “Where are all the other freighters?”

  The station manager just shook his head.

  They reached the docking boom. Chris waited while Finn and Maya directed everyone through the hatch. He stole a last glance through a porthole. Floodlights shone brightly on the name painted on the hull. Kumano Lily. Hopefully that was a lucky name for a spacecraft to last so long in its service life.

  He pointed his sidearm at the station manager. “Okay, guys, down you go.”

  “Wait. We’re not going with you?!”

  “Well, I’m not leaving you here.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  Reluctance spilled over the man’s face. But his eyes traveled from the pistol to the hatch, and he pushed himself down the boom with his coworker.

  Chris followed until he crossed the threshold onto the freighter. Right away he felt discomfort. The crowded airlock reeked of mildew and burned plastic and spoke volumes to the spacecraft’s environmental systems. Jack Bell, Finn, Elton, and the girls floated in confusion about where to go in the unfamiliar layout. Even the space station crew seemed disgusted.

  A yellow ship ladder stuck out from the opposite hull wall. Maya waved her arm in a circular motion. “Everyone up to the crew deck!”

  Finn helped the wounded RESIT troopers through a round hatch in the ceiling. Dr. Bell took the girls up next. Teo and Dave pulled themselves through a different hatch into a very small flight deck, where they started flipping the switches that would bring the freighter to life. Chris remained in the entry. He was having a stare-down with his head-butt partner when Wyatt appeared through the main hatch.

  “Any problems?” Chris asked.

  Wyatt shook his head. “Nothing a punch in the face didn’t fix.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve taught you something.”

  The lieutenant flashed a grin before he ducked into the cockpit. “How long will preflight take?”

  “Ninety minutes, but the more the better,” Teo said.

  “You have ten. Make it happen.”

  Teo and the copilot traded glances. Chris thought he heard one of them mutter something like sure, what could go wrong and felt his stomach do a little jump.

  Wyatt withdrew from the cockpit and switched on his comm. “Laramie, are the prisoners secure?”

  “Ran out of duct tape, LT, but yes.”

  “Copy that. Get yourselves and the provisions to the freighter ASAP.”

  “Roger.”

  Chris waved his pistol toward the two men in front of him. “What do you want to do with these bozos?”

  “We’ll shove ‘em into the boom when we leave. No point taking them with us.”

  The station workers’ expressions filled with relief.

  Chris stole a glance out the airlock window at the growing sunrise over Juliet. He wished he were staying behind as well.

  34

  Kumano Lily

  Juliet Orbit, Alpha Centauri A

  3 March 2272

  Wyatt glanced at the chronometer on his wrist. They were
taking too long.

  Taking control of Flight Ops hadn’t been the problem. The four station workers surrendered immediately and never had a chance to call Security. But the airspace board that tracked every asset from groundside to orbit and beyond also showed a Fast Attack on patrol. Wyatt struggled to do the math in his head, but something told him Razor would be coming uncomfortably close to their flight path.

  “How much longer?” he asked.

  Teo remained all business, his voice seemingly without worry. “Almost there. Can’t cut out any more.”

  Wyatt looked around the entry deck. Portable ration crates from the station’s emergency lockers sat hastily secured against the bulkhead. By the airlock hatch, Chris supervised two tense prisoners. Everyone else had buckled in on the crew deck.

  Laramie emerged from the threshold that led to the cargo bays. The metal hatch swung on hinges instead of retracting into the bulkhead, another testimony to the age of their newly acquired vessel.

  “Cargo bay is secure, LT,” Laramie said. “There’s nothing back there. Just rusty shipping containers and leaky pipes.”

  Wyatt smirked. “Leaky pipes are a good thing.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Out of leaks and you’re out of fluids.”

  Laramie shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re even joking about this.”

  “Did you check the reactor room?”

  “Gavin’s on it. We’ll see if he’s glowing when he gets back up here.”

  Wyatt checked his wrist again, and tried to think of what they might have missed.

  Teo’s voice rang loudly from the flight deck. “Time to button up.”

  Wyatt pointed at the two prisoners and motioned toward the airlock. “It’s your lucky day, gentlemen. Get out.”

  The man with the broken nose eyed Chris before floating himself through the hatch. The other prisoner didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even bother to look over his shoulder.

  Chris swung the hatch closed and pulled the locking latch. Behind the tiny porthole, the opposite airlock door slid shut. Wyatt watched as the Marine waved his fingers at the glass and said, “Bye, bye, tough guy.”

  “Hatch is closed,” Wyatt relayed to the flight deck.

  “Copy.” Teo’s verbal checklist transformed into something purely functional. “Switching to onboard power … check. Retracting umbilical. Docking ring is unlocked. We are clear of the docking boom.”

  Wyatt grabbed the cargo net that held the ration crates. He motioned for Chris to secure himself. “Teo—max accel. Go!”

  Over the next sixty seconds, Wyatt felt his weight increase a hundredfold. The sense of freefall evaporated as his boots slipped into the empty air. Moments later he found new footing against the rubberized deck that had previously acted as compartment walls. A ration crate shifted behind the cargo net, threatening to smash his fingers before it held fast against its neighbor.

  “We’re maxed, Wyatt,” Teo said shortly after. “One point four gee.”

  “That’s all she can make?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Wyatt tried to do the math to put them at the quantum gate. Everything he came up with fell short. “If we do a midpoint turnaround, that puts us seven and a half days out. We’ve got less than six.”

  “I’ve got the control rods all the way out. These reactors don’t have it.”

  “Then work it from the radiator side.”

  “Already trying.”

  He saw Chris trying to follow the conversation. The Marine stood on a bulkhead that now became the floor under acceleration. He was gingerly testing his broken arm.

  “We aren’t done, are we?” he asked.

  “No. No, we’re not.”

  “What’s up?”

  Space travel at the distances involved was anything but quick. Wyatt decided he had the time. “Most commercial spacecraft are rated for three gees. We’re pushing half that. We’re not going to get to the gate in time for the transit window.”

  “You said something about a midpoint turnaround?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Just delay when you start your deceleration, right?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Marine logic.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “You want to know what one of RESIT’s most important jobs is?”

  “What?”

  “‘To destroy any inbound spacecraft operating with excessive velocity or in an unsafe manner toward a quantum gate.’ Basically, protect trillion-dollar hardware from kinetic weapons and stupid pilots.”

  Chris gave him a skeptical look. “So, you’re not going to do it?”

  “No, we’ll do it,” Wyatt confessed. “We won’t have any choice. But that brings up the second problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “There’s a RESIT Fast Attack that’s on an intercept course. If we do a midpoint turn, they’ll catch up to us.”

  “Oh.” Chris frowned. “I don’t like that. Do you have a plan?”

  Wyatt glanced at the dinginess of the entry compartment. “In this?” He didn’t bother coming up with an answer he didn’t have.

  “Well, if you’re going to break regs, at least we won’t live long enough for the court- martial.”

  ***

  The next several days of spaceflight proved to be unremarkable. Shipping lanes normally full of vessels queuing up for a transit window were empty and deserted. Communication channels across the radio spectrum delivered only the static of empty space. Teo had managed to squeeze a sustainable one point six gee out of the ancient reactor system, and they’d delayed their midpoint turnaround an entire twenty-four hours to close the gap with Thermopylae.

  Wyatt was stowing his lunch trash when Teo’s voice crackled over the comm.

  “Lieutenant? New contact, bearing two-twelve by thirty-three, twenty-eight thousand klicks. On an intercept course with negative closure. I think our bogey found us.”

  The message had to come sooner or later. Wyatt sat up from his little corner in Cargo Bay C and finished chewing zero-gee rations, basically a chunky milkshake squeezed through a wide-mouthed cap. Eating under gravity seemed to make it marginally better. The flavor, not so much.

  “Any hails?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Think they’ve seen us?”

  “It’s a Fast Attack, Lieutenant. Of course they have.”

  Wyatt nodded to himself. Their pursuer’s mission would be about elimination, not interdiction, then. Now it was just a matter of targeting accuracy. “How long until they’re in weapons range?”

  “Maybe eighteen hours. They must be pushing close to four gees.”

  “Jesus. ETA to Thermopylae?”

  “Twenty hours, forty-three minutes. And that’s with us coming in blazing fast.”

  Whoever ordered Razor after them wanted them shut down, bad.

  Wyatt squeezed the meal tube one last time and a blob of noodles popped through all at once. A moment later, his nose was running from the heat.

  “Discontinue decel, Teo. Turn us around. Shave as much off our flight time as you can.”

  “Sir? That velocity … I have to advise against—”

  “I know it’s screaming fast. They’re going to blow us to smithereens if we don’t.” A dark smile crept over his face. “At least there’s no commercial traffic in the way.”

  “Aye, aye, Lieutenant.”

  With no other options, Wyatt felt strangely at peace with such an audacious command. He climbed up the crew ladder to Cargo Bay B. Laramie was asleep on a makeshift cot of insulation. She held her battered ARC vest between her head and her elbow like a pillow.

  “Staff Sergeant,” he said.

  Her green eyes popped open and stared blankly at him for a second.

  “LT. What’s up?”

  “Fast Attack closing on us.” He took her through the situation. Laramie’s face remained neutral throughout it all. After he finished, she just shrugged.

  “So, RESIT Dagger is coming to finish u
s off?”

  “Don’t call them RESIT,” Wyatt said. “I won’t believe that’s who’s piloting that ship.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

  “We’re not dead yet.”

  “No. But our number’s probably due.” She sat up and yawned. “Shot down from orbit. Hijacked a moving train. Had a firefight with police. Ran from telepathic zombies.” A sarcastic laugh escaped her lips. “These last few weeks are the definition of nuts.”

  “So what’s one more thing? Threading the needle on a quantum gate?”

  Laramie leaned her head against the bulkhead and watched him through heavy eyes.

  “Wyatt. What do you think’s going to happen to Juliet?”

  She never called him Wyatt. It caught him off guard. He wasn’t even sure how to tackle the magnitude of such a question.

  “How many people did you say live there?” he asked. “Twenty million?”

  “Yeah, give or take.”

  After a heavy silence, he opted for the hopeful. “That’s a lot of brain power to figure out a problem, Laramie. Whether it’s resistance groups like Chris’s, or researchers like Dr. Bell. Maybe there are others we didn’t see. Have faith. Someone will tackle what’s worth fighting for.”

  “What if the someone was supposed to be us?”

  Their eyes met. An incredible sadness filled Laramie’s face, a sister unable to save her family as the house burned down around them. He reached out and squeezed her arm. He knew there was no way to answer that question. All they could do was focus on what was immediately in front of them.

  The clock ticked away as Teo put them back under acceleration.

  At twelve hours to intercept, Dave finally got the freighter’s antiquated optical sensor arrays to positively ID their pursuer. It was indeed Razor. Wyatt frowned at the spacecraft that had butchered the crew of the Mozambique.

  At ten hours, Thermopylae came to life. A halo of radiation filled their sensors as the quantum gates sidestepped the constraints of three dimensions, revealing a holographic universe where the concept of distance was a derived and optional attribute of space-time.