by Ryk Brown
“She doesn’t like me much, to be honest. She’ll probably be more than happy to divorce my sorry ass.”
Cameron smiled at the commander.
“Look, Captain, I’m sorry I busted your butt this morning. But you really tossed a live one into the middle of the room, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiled at him again. “I’d rather have you speak your mind, Verbee. You know that.”
“That’s why I did.”
“How many pilots did we lose?”
“Are you kidding? Pilots are a glory-hungry bunch of idiots. They’re already starting a pool on who will get the most Jung kills.”
“Speaking from personal experience?”
“Damn right. I was just as dumb, once.”
Cameron watched as the cargo shuttle closed its boarding ramp and began to roll into the transfer airlock on the port side.
“Nothing but the good ones left, Captain. Now, why don’t you go and tell them the real reason we’re going rogue?” Commander Verbeek suggested.
“I wish everyone would stop calling it that,” she chuckled. “Makes us sound like a bunch of space pirates.”
“Commander Verbeek, Pirate CAG. I kind of like the sound of that.”
Cameron smiled and headed out of the flight operations center. She stepped into the corridor and to the port side, then back out onto the catwalk. With fewer than one hundred of her crew remaining, she chose to make her way down the side gangway to talk to them at deck level. They deserved that, at least. “Comms,” she called over her comm-set as she headed for the port forward ladder, “Play the message, ship-wide, every view screen, including the status screen on the forward bulkhead of the main hangar deck.”
“Aye, sir,” Ensign deBanco replied.
Cameron made her way down the steep steps to the main hangar deck below.
“Hello, Miri. I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to hear from me again,” Nathan’s voice echoed throughout the ship as the message reached every screen, every speaker, and every comm-set aboard the Aurora.
Cameron studied the faces of her assembled crew as she approached; all were transfixed by the image and words of a hero everyone thought was long dead. She waited to the side, not wanting to distract them, as the message played out. Nearing the message’s end, the sounds of explosions began to fill the hangar bay, and Cameron continued toward the center, coming to stand directly in front of her crew when the video ended.
“The bravest, most dedicated, most selfless man I have ever known is about to risk his life again, to save not only the Pentaurus, but quite possibly the entire galaxy. And the Aurora is going to help him.”
“Company, A-TEN-SHUN!” Master Chief Warhl barked.
The men and women of the Aurora snapped to attention.
“Dismissed,” Cameron said proudly. “And thank you.”
Cameron stood still, feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind her back, making eye contact and nodding at every crew member who passed on their way back to their duty stations. Those who had stuck by her would never be forgotten.
She would make damned sure of it.
* * *
Connor walked between the stacks of massive cargo pods, up the center of the Glendanon’s cavernous cargo bay, headed aft. As he approached the makeshift airlock, fashioned to join the starboard and port stacks to the aft entry into the cargo ship’s inhabited areas, he could see workers high above him, welding sections of cargo pod hulls into place along the inner frame of the aft-most cargo bay doors. They started work within hours of their initial meeting, and had already torn apart two whole cargo pods. Unfortunately, their work was interrupted by the long depressurization, and repressurization, of the Glendanon’s cargo bay, an event that rarely occurred on such a ship. Connor had no idea if their efforts to protect those forced to reside inside the cargo pods would do any good. There had been some debate about waiting for the Aurora to arrive. She would have additional space for the refugees, as well as dedicated fabrication facilities to create proper shielding panels. Although the Ghatazhak had a few fabricators, they were dedicated to completing the combat modifications to the Seiiki.
The Seiiki…a combat ship. The idea made Connor laugh. Sometimes he just had to pretend like none of this was real…like it was some kind of a dream. It was all happening so fast. Despite his inherent nature to make decisions on instinct, as of late, he had developed the annoying habit of over-analyzing things prior to making a decision.
Connor reached the entrance to the makeshift airlock. The airlock itself was nothing more than a metal shipping container, just big enough to hold a half dozen people. The Ghatazhak technicians had installed hatches taken from a few of the Glendanon’s escape pods—a fact that made the crew somewhat unhappy—and a pressurization system from one of the pods, as well. After sealing the whole thing up, they connected it to the main hatch from the cargo bay into the inhabited area, then to the port and starboard cargo pod stacks via expandable rescue tunnels. They then wrapped them in carbon-sheathing in order to stiffen them up and provide additional strength. It wasn’t a pretty setup, but it worked.
For now, however, movement through the airlock was quick. Although Captain Gullen required the airlock doors to remain closed at all times, with the cargo bay pressurized, there was no delay waiting for pressurization cycles to complete.
Connor entered the lowest class one cargo pod in the port stack. It had been hastily turned into a medical bay, and was packed with the wounded. Although it was still a busy place, full of pain and suffering, it was not the chaos and despair he had witnessed back on Burgess just over a day ago. Still, there were far too many patients, and too few real doctors to tend their wounds. There were, however, plenty of volunteers willing to do what they could. Anything to pass the time, and get away from the gloom and desperation of the cargo pods packed full of refugees above.
“Do you know where Lieutenant Nash is located?” Connor asked one of the volunteers. “Black hair, pretty, the only female Ghatazhak?”
“Oh, her,” the lady replied, turning to point to a row of curtains along the forward side of the massive pod. “Third curtain.”
“Thanks,” Connor said, continuing on. He carefully made his way around the cots and the piles of bloody debris. A minute later, he pulled back the third curtain slowly, and found Jessica lying on a cot inside. “Nice room,” he said, pulling the curtain closed behind him.
“Yeah, ain’t it?” Jessica said as she sat up. “I have no idea why they put me in here. I told them I could go back and hang with the Ghatazhak. I can give myself the nanite boosters.”
“I don’t think conditions are much better anywhere else than they are right here. At least, not from what I’ve seen so far.”
“So, how did the jump training go?” she asked, looking for any reason to keep talking. “You and the docs low-level insertion experts now?”
“Far from it, I’m sure,” Connor replied. “I have to admit though, it was kind of fun. Not as hard as I thought, either.”
“You’ve done it a few times before,” Jessica reminded Connor. “As Nathan, I mean. Well, not actually the low-level stuff, but the parachute stuff.”
Connor nodded. “I figured as much.”
“Did you have a memory of it?” Jessica wondered, encouraged by his recognition.
“No, it just stood to reason. He was a military-trained pilot, after all.”
“It’s still kind of weird to hear you talk about yourself in the third person,” Jessica told him. “I mean, I know why you do it, but it’s still weird.”
“He still is someone else to me,” Connor reminded her.
“I know, I know. The beard and the hair help, a little.”
“Yeah, I was wondering the other day if my clone… I mean, his clone… The fift
h generation clone…”
“I got it…”
“I was wondering if he has a beard.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really,” Connor admitted. “It was just a thought that crossed my mind. I mean, after I transfer into him, will I look any different?”
“Well, beard or no beard, you will be five years younger than you are now.”
“I will?”
“Yeah,” Jessica replied. “They only grow them to the age of twenty-five.”
“Earth years, or Corinairan years?” Connor wondered.
Jessica looked puzzled. “You know, I don’t think I ever really asked. It could be twenty-five Nifelmian years, for all I know.”
“I guess I’ll ask Doctor Sato when I see her again.”
“Call her Michi,” Jessica suggested. “She hates being called ‘doctor’. So does Tori.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Jessica pulled herself up a little, wincing.
“How’s the leg doing?” Connor wondered, noticing her discomfort.
“It’s a little sore,” she admitted. “Mostly because of all the physical therapy they’ve got me doing. There’s no equipment here, so they have to come up with some interesting ways to exercise my leg. Other than that, it’s coming along nicely. I should be able to get up and walk around in a couple of days.”
“I heard they have a gym on board,” Connor told her. “I don’t know how good it is, but you might want to check it out.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“Are you going to be ready in time to escort us down to Corinair for my ‘coming out party’?” Connor joked.
“Are you kidding?” Jessica smiled. “I’ve been waiting seven years for this.”
* * *
“We cleared the Sol sector on our last jump, Captain,” Commander Kaplan reported across the conference table in the Aurora’s command briefing room. “Technically, we are now in Jung-controlled space, although there are no known outposts out here, and we are following the established outbound transit route from Sol to the Pentaurus cluster. I’ve ordered deep space scans and have asked Commander Verbeek to have his people conduct extended recon patrols during every recharge layover. We’re also keeping the shields up, but at minimal power, so that they don’t slow down the recharging process any more than we have to.”
“Very well,” Cameron replied.
“Commander Kamenetskiy is running all four antimatter reactors at one hundred and thirty-five percent to compensate for the additional power drain by our shields. But, that’s fifteen percent over their maximum short-duration rating, and he’s running them that high around the clock. He insists it is safe, but I’m not so sure. I think he’ll do anything to get back to his friend.”
“If the commander says it’s safe, I believe him,” Cameron insisted. “He knows we won’t do Nathan and the Karuzari any good if we blow ourselves up before we get there.”
“Yeah, well, I’m surprised that he didn’t propose we try to recreate your original super jump,” the commander said.
“He did,” Cameron replied. “I’m pretty sure he was kidding, though.” Cameron exchanged glances with her XO, as Lieutenant Commander Shinoda and Lieutenant Commander Vidmar both came into the room.
“Captain, we’ve finished reviewing everything we have from fleet intelligence about the invasion of the Pentaurus cluster. Of course, their reports are still referring to them as ‘the Jung’, even the intel updates we received just before departure.”
“What have you found?”
“Well, not a lot, I’m afraid. As soon as they received word, fleet sent a few surveillance drones back to the PC. Out of ten drones, only four made it back.”
“What happened to the other six?” Commander Kaplan asked.
“We don’t know,” the lieutenant commander replied.
“The Dusahn probably shot them down,” Lieutenant Commander Vidmar commented.
“The Ghatazhak did collect some old light from the initial invasion, as well as a lot of civilian broadcasts…mostly news stuff. But it gave us additional images, many of them much better quality than we could hope for, collecting old light from afar.”
Lieutenant Commander Shinoda stuck his data chip into the slot on the conference table, then picked up the remote and activated the view screen on the wall of the briefing room. “These pictures are from satellites in orbit over Corinair. And I think a few of them are from shuttles that were probably in orbit at the time of the attack. So far, we’ve been able to determine that there were at least four ships that invaded the Darvano system. Two were most likely frigates, as their images were not large enough to be destroyers. One was a cruiser, and another was either a heavy cruiser, or a battleship…we’re not sure.”
“You can’t tell?”
“The problem is that the Dusahn ships, although obviously of Jung design, are likely much older than anything we’ve seen, and have probably been modified over time. For all we know, they aren’t even the same ships they departed with. They could have conquered some industrialized worlds along the way, and used them to build new ships.”
“Or captured some and modified them.” Commander Kaplan added.
“In order to take out the Avendahl, at least one of those ships would have to be a battleship, if not a battle platform,” Lieutenant Commander Vidmar remarked.
“They didn’t start building battle platforms until about a century ago,” Cameron reminded them.
“A battleship then.”
“Even with the element of surprise, the Avendahl should have been able to defend against a battleship,” Commander Kaplan insisted.
Lieutenant Commander Shinoda pressed the remote again, putting up several new images. “Not if the Dusahn have large-scale energy weapons.”
Cameron and the others looked at the pictures. Brilliant red bolts of energy appeared to be traveling between the Dusahn ships, and the Avendahl.
“Plasma cannons?” Cameron wondered.
“That would be my guess,” the lieutenant commander agreed. “Or some other type of directed energy weapon.”
“If the Dusahn were cast out, it would make sense for them to develop large-scale energy weapons,” Commander Kaplan pointed out. “Better than having to carry around a few billion rail gun slugs everywhere you go.”
“So how many ships will we be facing when we jump into the Darvano system?” Cameron wondered.
“We examined all the intel we received from fleet prior to going rogue…” Shinoda looked at the captain. “Sorry, prior to departure. Anyway, the greatest number of ships we have seen in the Darvano system at one time is four, but usually only three. But, we don’t have any recent data. Everything we have is from four days ago. And, since the PC is only ten light years across, they could have twenty ships in the cluster, all of which could jump to Darvano within minutes.”
“All you really need to hold the cluster is one big-ass warship, and a bunch of frigates…or even gunships,” Lieutenant Commander Vidmar observed. “Really, once they were rid of the Avendahl, they pretty much owned the entire sector, Captain.”
“There’s something else to consider,” Lieutenant Commander Shinoda said. “The attack on the Darvano system occurred thirty minutes after the attack on the Takar system. And the attack on the Takar system was basically over in about twenty minutes, twenty-five tops.”
“So, they may have used the same ships for both attacks,” Cameron realized.
“Or, at the very least, a few from the first attack were sent to join the second attack,” the lieutenant commander suggested. “Our intel on the attack on the Takar system is pretty weak. We don’t even have any good IDs on the ships the Dusahn used. Just some basic ship size and count stuff. So what we originally thought to
be at least six to eight ships, could in fact be four to six.”
“Or even just four,” Lieutenant Commander Vidmar commented.
“I’m betting at least six,” Lieutenant Commander Shinoda said. “We sent a recon drone to the Burgess system just after you told us about the message. It came back less than an hour ago.”
“What did it find?” Cameron asked, afraid of the answer.
Lieutenant Commander Shinoda shook his head. “Burgess was glassed. Nothing left alive. It will be uninhabitable for centuries. The drone collected old light, and we identified the attacking ships. An assault ship was first, but somehow the Ghatazhak managed to take it out. Then, about ninety minutes later, three more ships arrived. Two small, one large. I’m guessing two frigates and a heavy cruiser or battleship. If I’m right, and they started with six ships, then they’re down to five now.”
“Unless they have ships in reserve somewhere,” Commander Kaplan commented.
“Do we have any estimates on the Dusahn’s jump range?” Cameron wondered.
“We don’t really have any information on that,” Lieutenant Commander Shinoda admitted.
“Best guess,” Cameron urged him.
Lieutenant Commander Shinoda hesitated. “There are just too many unknowns, Captain. They could be using four jump drives per ship, each with a range of thirty light years. They could be using two with fifty light year ranges. Or one that jumps one hundred and twenty. It’s a wild guess at this point. For all we know, they could have staged ships nearby before attacking Sherma, although that would be an uncharacteristic strategy for the Jung.”
“But perhaps not for the Dusahn,” Cameron said.
“Like I said, too many unknowns,” the lieutenant commander replied. “All we know for certain is that Dusahn reinforcements arrived at Burgess an hour and a half after the Ghatazhak defeated the first ship they sent. So one would have to assume that they have at least a ninety minute response capability of at least one hundred and twelve light years.”
