Far Space

by Jason Kent

  If she had only known they had expected her to do all the astro-navigation! She knew she was on her own for good when she asked the young seaman serving as the ships official navigator for help. He was good at running the ships nav computer and could get the ship wherever it needed to go inside a star system, where the reference points were all based on gravitational fields centered on a solar body, planets and other minor bodies. Unfortunately, he had been given no instruction on wormhole navigation. All he knew how to do was find the right place in orbit for conjuncture and wormhole entry…if he were given the coordinates from the computer and the gravitation sensors on board the ship. Basically, if it was not automated, the poor guy was out of luck.

  She really should have not agreed to this.

  But, despite all the trials, here they were at their destination at last. Jennifer stared at the main viewer. It showed the world they had been seeking, a beautiful blue marble streaked by white clouds.

  The second planet of system 4576B was a water world with none of the browns or greens to disturb the two-tone color scheme. Long-range images showed some small islands. Inconsequential as they were on a planetary scale, these isles were all the planet offered in the way of any landmass. As Tom had so eloquently stated, ‘that left plenty of room for them squidies.’

  Jennifer had not openly questioned the goal of their ‘mission’. The official statement seemed inadequate after she had observed the crew more closely. This should have been a high level diplomatic mission. The longer she was aboard, the more it seemed like some sort of unofficial covert mission, and a poorly planned one at that. She started looking through the log files from the alien ship first using Quade’s crude first start at deciphering. As it turned out, Jennifer had a knack for not only navigation using the alien data base, but also for reading their language. Perhaps it was simply because she spent so much time looking at the strange characters. Jennifer began to make additions (and corrections) to the team linguist’s translation program. She had approached Quade a second time to share her progress and was not-so-politely told to keep her nose out of his business. So, Jennifer had begun her own files on her personal pad and worked on the translations during their careful transits between wormhole entry points. What she found was interesting.

  What Jennifer did not find was disturbing.

  Major portions of the data were missing. Jennifer noticed the time tags did not match up from one entry to another. The ‘star log’ tags should have been sequential but were not, instead they jumped all over the place. Someone had cut major sections of information away. The uncorrelated data was worse.

  After Six had been secured aboard Cheyenne Jennifer had helped download the data she was seeing. Well, the data she was now seeing part of, she thought. Jennifer knew the team from Cheyenne had managed to download literally terabytes of data. What she was looking at amounted to only a few hundred megabytes.

  But Jennifer had a secret. She had kept a desk copy of the downloaded files even after the military had collected up all the alien data upon their arrival back in Earth Space. The data tabs she had recorded everything on fit nicely into the lining of her makeup kit. She did turn in her other working copies like a good girl, knowing she would get copies of the communications system information she was slated to continue studying. With all official data accounted for, no one checked very hard when she toted her one bag of personal items off Cheyenne for her shuttle back to Far Side Station on the lunar surface.

  Jennifer worried she had broken the law. But, for the life her, could not figure out which one. She had not been ordered to turn over all her data; it was more of a request. Besides, she was not in the military anyway. So, she kept her copy, quietly stashed in bathroom drawer in her quarters and conveniently forgot to mention it to her new husband.

  Now, with the data finally coming in very handy as she uploaded it onto her data pad, she thanked God she had thought to make the copies.

  Jennifer ensured the wireless feature of the pad was off, fearing someone on the ship might notice her copies of the logs were nearly one hundred times larger than the ‘official copy.’ She found the name of the aliens almost right away, for some reason, it had been purged from the data she had been given.

  Humanity was at odds with beings who called themselves the Soosuri. That mystery solved, Jennifer went back to the entry describing the planet where the mission had decided to attempt contact. There were two things wrong with the team’s choice of objectives for this mission.

  First, as far as Jennifer could tell, there were nearly one hundred and sixty seven planets with a Soosuri presence. The one world they had been focusing on, the planet Jennifer had at first assumed was some sort of capital, was far from the center of the Soosuri star-spanning civilization. Studying the broader set of data, it was easy to see the planet in System 4576B was hard to find, hard to travel to, as she well knew, and did not seem to have a significant alien population.

  Second, the data she was now able to decipher seemed to indicate this was some sort of off-limits world. She did not have the word for ‘quarantine’ yet, but the rest of the description fit: basically instructions for how to approach the planet to avoid the ‘undesirable’ population concentrated near one of the undersea uplifted areas around a string of desolate islands.

  Jennifer locked her datapad and leaned back in the acceleration couch she used as her station on the tiny bridge. She glanced at the Captain and James Monroe huddled in conference. What the heck was going on here anyway?

  C-31R SOF Reconnaissance Spacecraft - “Reaper 16”

  Jupiter Space

  Ian poked his head through the hatch leading to the tiny bridge of the Reaper and took a moment to look around. “Wow, and I thought the 25 I trained on was cramped.” The C-25B was a small orbital transport manned by a two person crew. It was big enough to give a new pilot much needed experience during undergraduate pilot training the feel for flying a multi-engine, high mass ship. It was also forgiving enough not to kill a trainee for handling the stick too hard.

  “The 31 is small, but I bet your 25 didn’t have an AM drive,” the young man in the pilot’s seat said. He turned around to look at Ian. “Or a jump drive.”

  “True.” Ian squeezed further inside and stretched out his hand to the pilot. “Ian Langdon.”

  The pilot took Ian’s hand and responded with a firm grip. “First Lieutenant Jeff Michaels. Call me Ghost. You a Century guy?”

  “Sort of,” Ian said with a shake of his head. “I was on my way to my first assignment on the Schiever and got a little side-tracked by an alien invasion. Ended up on a Horizon instead.”

  “Horizon-class,” Ghost said, chewing his lip. “That’d be Cheyenne. Well at least you’ve got some experience with AM drives.”

  “You could say that,” Ian agreed. He thought back to the crash training course he and then-Captain Maytree had received on the power systems of the Cheyenne before they had piloted the Cheyenne from L5 out to Saturn.

  “So, that’s where you know Yates from?” the woman in the co-pilot’s seat asked. She stuck out her hand to Ian. “First Lieutenant Elisa Byrd. Don’t expect Ghost to hand over the controls. Reaper 16 is his baby.”

  Ian thought back to his time piloting the Cheyenne. “I can understand that.”

  Ghost ran his hand over his control console. “Robin’s just jealous because I give my lady so much attention.”

  “In your dreams,” Robin snorted.

  “Status.”

  The three young officers turned to find a Lieutenant Colonel in the doorway.

  “All we were missing was you, sir,” Ghost said, turning back to his controls.

  Ian stood hunched over between the pilot and co-pilot seats for an awkward moment as the man, his name tag simply identified him as Lt Col Bridges, looked him up and down.

  “Captain, unless you plan on taking my seat, you need to stow yourself,” Bridges said, pointing at a jumpseat folded up in the corner of the bridge.


  Ian moved to the side of the bridge to allow Bridges to squeeze past him to the command seat located directly behind Ghost. It was raised slightly to allow the spacecraft commander to see over the pilot’s head. As Bridges and the others busied themselves with getting the Reaper ready for launch, Ian pulled the jump seat down and strapped in. Inspecting his immediate area, he was relieved to find the jump seat could serve as a fourth station on the bridge. He pulled down a display and control console stowed in the bulkhead and activated the board.

  Other than monitoring the status of the ship, Ian had little to do. What was he now anyway? A mission specialist?

  “I hope you know where we’re going, Langdon,” Bridges said, looking down from his seat to Ian’s. “The only reason I’m doing this is because I trust Yates with my life. You, on the other hand...”

  Ian nodded. The implication was clear. Bridges did not like this at all and certainly did not trust the young Captain foisted upon him by the General. Ian pulled out the data pad Yates had given him and showed it to Bridges. “Our complete route is laid out.”

  Bridges grunted at what he thought was obviously an inadequate response. The commander turned to face forward. “Ghost, get us out of here. The Captain has an important mission which requires our urgent attention.”

  Ian turned on the data pad for the first time. He hoped to God Yates was right and everything he needed was in here. He really had no idea where they were going. Ian replayed the hasty discussion with the general just fifteen minutes old.

  After entering the hanger, Yates had huddled with Ian outside the Reaper’s hatch. Their faceplates touching so they did not have to use their intercoms, Yates had finally confided his theory on what Jennifer’s mission had been and why it was imperative Ian find her. When Yates had finished, Ian was left speechless. Yates had tapped the data pad Ian now carried and simply said, ‘Don’t worry, this explains everything.’

  Ian tucked the precious data pad away and settled back in his seat in preparation for the imminent launch. He was not sure what to expect but Ian knew enough about special ops craft to know this thing would most likely take off like a bat out of hell.

  Ghost positioned the Reaper at the base of the long tunnel leading from the hidden hanger to the moon’s surface and accelerated.

  Ian’s suspicions concerning the small spacecraft’s capabilities were confirmed. The acceleration felt like a giant hand pressing against his chest. He tensed his legs and torso in an attempt to keep the blood from draining from his head and only partially succeeded. As the C-31R cleared the edge of the ice tunnel, blackness was creeping into the edge of Ian’s vision. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Thankfully, the acceleration eased off as they reached something closer to their cruising speed.

  Opening his eyes, Ian found the entire three man crew looking back at him. They obviously had used this display on newbies before.

  “You okay, Captain?” Ghost asked with a grin.

  “Just like jumping out of an elevator,” Ian replied. He pointed out the bridge window. “You’re about to recreate my landing though.”

  Ghost turned to find their ground-hugging flight path down a broad ice canyon was about to abruptly end as the canyon wall turned. The pilot calmly flicked the controls, rolling the Reaper to starboard so they turned to follow the canyon. After a few seconds, Ghost popped the Reaper up and away from Europa’s surface, heading more or less toward Jupiter hanging swollen in the dark sky.

  Continuing as if nothing had happened, Ghost turned back to Ian and said. “You’ll have to fill me in on the elevator thing sometime. That sounds cool.”

  Robin said, “Only you would think parachuting from orbit is cool.”

  “Come on,” Ghost said, “think about the rush!”

  Bridges snorted.

  Ian nodded and said, “Well, I was kind of in a rush not to get blown up.”

  “What’d I say?” Ghost said to Robin.

  Robin just rolled her eyes. “Men.”

  Ian pulled up the feed from a rear camera to watch Europa falling away. The exit from the SOF hanger had been in one of the nameless ice canyons which were found all over the moon’s icy surface. The secret exit point and Ghost’s piloting down the canyon for some ways before heading out into space explained how special forces was able to conduct many of their missions without alerting even those working on the COAC Ops Floor. Ian thought he knew about everything going on throughout the solar system while he pulled his shifts as a planner on the CAOC staff.

  How wrong he had been.

  From their covert hanger, SOCOM could launch missions out the side of a ridge located four clicks from the base proper. Timing their arrivals and departures carefully, covert missions could take place undetected; Ian noted the contours Ghost had followed allowed him to skirt the bases active sensors and other stay out of view of any other vessels using the spaceport. Once clear of Europa’s surface, the stealth capabilities of the Reaper ensured no one noticed the little ship unless the crew wanted them to.

  Yates had been busy indeed.

  “Captain Langdon,” Bridges said without looking over, “if you could tell Lieutenant Byrd where we are headed, we can get on with our initial jump.”

  Ian checked the data pad. He scrolled through the icons on the opening screen and quickly found the list of wormholes they would follow as they traced Jennifer’s footsteps. He read off the wormhole designation here in the local Jovian Cluster. “Do you need the coordinates?”

  Robin shook her head. “No sir, got it here in the directory. Ghost, the heading is on your heads up display.”

  “Got it,” Ghost acknowledged. “It’s not too far. Go ahead and prep the jump drive.”

  With the antimatter system powering the normal space drive and the jump drive, the little Reaper could go just about anywhere it wanted to go. Ian hoped they had counted on having an extra passenger on this trip. The main limfac with this ship would be consumables. Ian checked the list of wormholes they would have to traverse. It just would not do to run out of food or air sixteen jumps from home.

  Another thought hit Ian. The Reaper might be nearly invisible to sensors, but opening a wormhole anywhere in the Solar System, especially close to the base on Europa, was bound to set off any number of alarms throughout the Jovian Cluster, the originating point of the last alien invasion of Near Space.

  Ian nodded to himself. If SOCOM had been conducting covert missions through the wormholes, it would explain many strange occurrences he had witnessed on the CAOC Ops Floor. There had been a few instances when the crew on duty had noted gravity fluctuations around Jupiter, indicating a possible wormhole opening. When this happened, the pucker factor sky-rocketed. Each time, the COAC Watch Officer, a Colonel with obviously more clearance than Ian possessed would simply turn the alarm off. Everyone would pretend nothing had happened and go on about their business. The Commander mush have been getting info on these types of missions being directed from behind the green door of the SOF Cell.

  Ian shrugged, he’d have to ask Yates what SOCOM was doing in Far Space someday. He ran a finger down the list of wormholes Jennifer had followed. As an expert in extra-solar navigation, she would have been the one to choose each and every jump. His path had been laid out for him. Now all he had to do was follow the bread crumbs Jennifer had left.

  “Coming up on our first jump point,” Robin reported.

  “We’re in line for the threshold,” Ghost added.

  “Accelerators?” Bridges asked.

  Robin tapped a few icons on her control board. “Ramping up – full power in fifteen seconds.”

  Ian tried to appear relaxed as massive amounts of energy were poured into the circular accelerators located further back in the spacecraft. On their Reaper, the ring was tilted to lower the cross-section of the spacecraft. It also gave the ship a distinctive bulge on either side of the hull. He knew the accelerators were the key piece of hardware making wormhole travel possible. Powered by the same AM system us
ed for the normal drive system which thrust the Reaper between planets and the jump drive which sucked in raw power for the accelerators and made travel between other star systems possible.

  Some tech back on Europa had tried to explain the intricacies of the wormhole drive to Ian. The quantum physics were lost on him, but he did understand the basics. The accelerators took very, very small amounts of matter and tossed them around a magnetically guided tour of the ring at the back of the ship. The matter was accelerated until it approached the speed of light. At that point, the laws of relativity took over. As the matter approached the magic speed of light, it began to have an infinite mass. This was important since only a near infinite mass could attract a wormhole entry point and allow it to line up precisely with the spacecraft approaching it. If even the smallest error occurred at this point of a jump; the ship and everyone on board would simply cease to exist.

  Ian watched the gravimetric readings. They were overlaid on the camera imager from the front of the Reaper and displayed on the main monitor at the front of the bridge. The gravity field lines warped into a recognizable pattern Ian had seen from other missions.

  “Ten seconds,” Ghost reported.

  “Full auto,” Bridges ordered.

  “Hands off,” Robin. “Threshold in three, two, one…”

  Ian was pressed back into his seat as the wormhole’s gravitational distortions encountered the Reaper’s near infinite mass. With computer controlled accuracy, the masses moving near the speed of light were stopped cold.

  Due to the conservation of energy and matter, all that energy had to go somewhere. That somewhere was the wormhole. The rip in space-time hungrily accepted the surge of energy, shuttling the massive ingest down its interstellar throat.

  The Reaper, with Ian strapped inside, was caught in the wake of the energy transfer and pulled along for the ride to the far end of the wormhole.