Chains of Destiny (Episode #2: The Pax Humana Saga)

by Nick Webb

  “Commander? Are you there?”

  She recognized the voice. Lieutenant Grace. The sound of the voice was almost unrecognizable over the klaxon of the red alert. Sweat stained her undershirt and she grabbed a soiled uniform top from the floor to mop her face.

  “Po here. What’s happening, Anya?”

  “An explosion on deck thirty-one, sir. And after the explosion, the hull buckled down there and flooded the entire deck before the emergency bulkhead came down. We’ve got casualty reports.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said, trying to not groan as she struggled to her feet.

  So much for sleep.

  ***

  By the time Po reached the bridge again, the klaxon had stopped, but the bridge crew was in a frenzy. The operations station flurried with activity as the ops crew did their best to manage and coordinate the emergency response to the hull breach, and the security station was already organizing an investigation into the cause of the explosion.

  “Was it intentional? Or just caused by the water pressure?” said Po as she walked through the door to the bridge.

  “We don’t know yet, Commander.” Anya stood up from the captain’s chair and stepped back as Po approached the command station and examined the console. She scanned through the data for the number that mattered.

  Nine.

  Dammit. Nine more. At least, the nine crew members stuck behind the emergency bulkhead were presumed dead—unless they’d all had time to reach an ASA suit or somehow found a pocket of oxygen trapped behind a bulkhead.

  “Have internal sensors been able to scan for life signs?” said Po, turning back to the ops center.

  A young technician shook his head. “No, sir. The salt water is interfering with sensor readings.”

  Another voice sounded over the comm. “Bridge, this is Chief Simmons in engineering. Sir, that blast knocked out our gravitic thrusters. Conventional only until we get that gravitic field projector repaired.

  As the man spoke, Po could hear the deckplates groan under her feet as the strain from the pressure warped the girders and support structure of the ship. How much more could the ship take? If there was a saboteur aboard, now was the time to find out, before they could kill another nine people. Or ninety. Or all of them. How many were left? 670? Or was it 663 now?

  “Thank you, Chief. Keep me apprised of progress. Po out.”

  She leaned in towards Lieutenant Grace, keeping her voice low to avoid the bridge crew overhearing. “Do you think one of Tomaga’s men could be responsible? I’ve got Volaski locked down in the brig, so I think we can eliminate him as a possibility.”

  “What about his men aboard the shuttle? Could they have triggered it remotely somehow?” Grace puffed the hair out of her eyes.

  “Possible. But I don’t want to remove them from the shuttle—they’re all armed, and we can’t trust Volaski that they want to help us. For now, we’ve got to keep them in their makeshift brig.”

  “We can disable all shuttle functions remotely. That would ensure they’re not using the shuttle’s functions to screw with the ship,” suggested Grace.

  “Good idea.” Po bowed her head, thinking. “Anya,” she said, turning to Lieutenant Grace, “we need intel. We need to know the second the Caligula leaves so we can get out of here.

  Grace nodded. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “We at least need to know its position so if we have to break the surface, we can do so when the Caligula is on the other side of the planet. And I think the only way we’re going to know that is to shift a fighter out there. Who do you trust?”

  Without skipping a beat, Anya replied, “I trust me.”

  Megan shook her head. “No. I’m not letting another senior officer off this ship. We can’t afford to lose you. Choose someone else.”

  “Fine. I’ll send Lieutenant Quadri. And I’ll stick the newbie with him as his gunner. Ashdown. He’s the least disappointing of the bunch.”

  Ashdown. Po’s back stiffened. She remembered his charred face from her dream, still fresh in her memory. “Very well. Go.”

  Po waved her hand to the back of the bridge, indicating to Grace to get a move on. As she watched her Wing Commander leave, she waded in among the chaos of the ops center.

  Time to track down the saboteur.

  ***

  Gavin almost danced he was so excited. Strapping himself in next to Lieutenant Quadri—a dark-haired, lean young man himself, probably no older than twenty-five by Gavin’s eye—he engaged his console and began going through his pre-flight checklist he’d learned over the past week.

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Quadri.

  “Doing pre-flight.”

  “Newbie, this is an urgent mission, not a training run. There’s no time. Engage the sensors, but passive only, and keep your thumbs ready to twitch in case we need to shoot our way out of a tight spot. Just leave everything else to me. Got it?” His dark eyes scanned over him and Gavin nearly wilted under the stare.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quadri nodded his approval, and thumbed open his comm channel. “Bridge, request permission to leave P-town.”

  Commander Po’s voice sounded over the main speaker. “Permission granted, P-one. Make your shift just fifty meters or so above our current position. Just above the ice. Then scan the sky before you head up there. Po out.”

  Quadri keyed the coordinates into the console and looked over at Gavin. “Ready, kid?”

  Gavin grinned.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face. It’s bad luck.” Quadri looked back down at his console. “Engaging in three, two, one….”

  As Gavin watched, the view of the fighter deck disappeared, replaced suddenly by the spectacular sight of an endless field of ice sheets, fragmented by deep blue, icy cold water under a pristine purple-blue sky without a single cloud. Too cold for clouds. He peered down below the craft at the ice sheet that hid the Phoenix, and gaped in awe. There was a thick, white layer of frost on the top, making the sheet completely opaque. There was no way any orbiting ship would be able to see under it.

  “Ashdown?” Quadri glanced at him, with an expectant look in his eyes.

  “Oh, right. Scanning….” Gavin flicked on the visual scanners, which made high-resolution, filtered images of the sky above them. After a minute, the computer gave him its conclusion: the orbital space above the north pole was clear. For now, at least.

  “We’re clear,” he said.

  “Sky acknowledged as clear, engaging engines now. Hold on to your butt—I’m taking us out fast with conventional thrusters. Too risky for gravitics.”

  Gavin nodded and immediately was thrown hard back into his seat. The bow of the ship pointed up and they began to pick up speed at an alarming rate. He felt his cheeks sag backward towards his ears, and found it difficult to breathe. He reckoned they were pushing four g’s.

  The leading edge of the fighter started to glow red. Gavin checked the altimeter and saw that they’d already passed three klicks. Quadri pulled back on the accelerator, reducing their acceleration to near zero, and the fierce glow on the leading edges of the bow and wings faded to a dull red, and then to nothing. Gavin saw the planet fall away beneath them, and the view of the blue sea speckled with the ice islands morphed into a sight that he still found breathtaking—the curvature of the planet, and the clouds far below, marking a distinct line between the green-blue of the lower atmosphere and the purple-black of the upper atmosphere and space.

  “Fifty klicks,” said Gavin. “We’re good to accelerate again—the atmosphere’s pretty thin.”

  Quadri hit the accelerator, throwing Gavin once again back into his seat. He fingered his console, initiating a passive EM and infrared scan in all directions from the ship. He had no idea what orbit the Caligula might be in, so he might as well scan all of them.

  An indicator flashed at him. “Contact. Coming up fast behind us!”

  Quadri glanced at his console in alarm. “What is it? Hurry! Tell me what it is!�
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  Gavin fumbled with his controls, trying to remember his scant training. “Uh, ok, trying to read the transponder….” Where was it? Which button? He breathed relief as he saw the appropriate control, and read off the resulting code out loud. “Merchant freighter out of the Oberon system. Registry code HY11 dash fourteen dash—“

  “Ok, ok! I don’t need a speech. Just tell me if the contact is Imperial or not.”

  “You don’t think the Imperials might have enlisted the help of all the merchants freighters in orbit to look for us? I hear the Empire can be persuasive,” said Gavin, trying to keep the edge of sarcasm out of his voice.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll incline our orbit away from them.” As Quadri pulled at the controls, the ship rotated, and accelerated to the east.

  Gavin felt vindicated and grinned as he scanned his console for more results. “So what’s the plan here? We scan for the Caligula, but what then? Won’t they be able to see us as we see them?”

  “Yeah, but we’re faster than the are. If they try to give us trouble, we’ll just shift to the opposite side of the planet and make them catch up. We just need to keep an eye on them, and shift back to the Phoenix when we see them doing anything suspicious. You know, like fire missiles down at her, or something.”

  “Got it.” Gavin got the feeling he was in for a long ride.

  Or not. “Contact. This one just appeared out of nowhere. No, wait. Three contacts!”

  “Get a read on them, newbie.”

  Gavin’s heart froze. “Uh, Quadri, they’ve got an Imperial code. They’re fighters. But….” He shook his head, trying to figure out his readings.

  Quadri’s voice had reached a crescendo. “But what?!”

  “But,” he began, gulping, “these fighters have a code that matches the fighters on the Roc. Wasn’t she destroyed back at Earth?”

  Quadri shrugged. “Looks like one survived. And the Empire stripped out her fighters. Gavin,” he turned to Ashdown, “this is bad news. Those fighters have the exact same capabilities as us. A regular Imperial fighter? Sure, that’s no problem. But three of our own? That’s a problem.”

  “What do we do? Do we shift back to P-town?”

  Quadri smirked. “To hell with that. We’re taking the bastards out.”

  Gavin’s frozen heart gave way to a deep knot in his stomach. He saw Quadri fire up the gravitic drive, and they accelerated up to match the speed of the incoming fighters. With a gulp, Gavin readied his triggers and prepared to get missile locks.

  Quadri let out a war-whoop as he flipped the ship ninety degrees and blasted out of the pursuit plane. In a split second, he tapped on the gravitics to shift them Z minus 500 meters, and suddenly Gavin saw the underbelly of one of the fighters loom up fast in the viewport. His twitchy thumbs squeezed the trigger, and the fighter exploded in a fiery cloud.

  “Nice shooting, kid. Hey, you’re not as bad as Grace said.”

  Gavin laughed. “Yeah, that was pretty—“

  “Don’t get cocky. There’s still two more. We’re only lucky that these pilots probably haven’t developed any tactics based on the short range gravitic shift.”

  A blinding flash ahead of them suggested otherwise, and Quadri hit the shift controls to get them out of the way of the suddenly incoming fighter. “Shit!”

  Their fighter flipped one eighty, giving Gavin a momentary view of the craft that had strafed them, but he missed his shots.

  “It’s ok, kid, we’ll just wear them down. Try to keep up.”

  The star field flipped again, making Gavin’s stomach lurch. He had to keep telling himself it was all a video game. It wasn’t real, he told himself. Just a game.

  Red streaks strafed past the viewport by Gavin’s left shoulder. He caught his breath in his throat.

  Just a game. Just a game.

  ***

  Titus glanced up at the Admiral. “Sir, our fighters report they’ve engaged a craft from the Phoenix.”

  “Excellent, Captain. Keep me apprised of their progress. Sensors,” he called behind him, “The Phoenix is here somewhere. Find them.”

  The sensor officer nodded, and busied himself with the console. Titus wasn’t sure what else the man could be doing, other than what he already was doing. The sensors only had so much bandwidth and could only scan a certain portion of the space above the planet at a given time.

  “Use whatever resources you need, sensors. If you think an extra five technicians will help you get the job done, then just say the word,” Trajan said.

  A look of surprise crossed the sensor officer’s face. A whole team of technicians helping him with his job? “I’m not sure I’d know what to do with them, sir.”

  Trajan’s eye darted towards the man, who looked away in what Titus could see was revulsion. The sensor officer apparently had not grown used to the crater of Trajan’s left eye. Titus wanted to reach out to the man and warn him to keep his emotions in check around the Admiral—he’d never seen him lash out at anyone because of the eye, but he didn’t want any preventable outbursts, either.

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something, sensor officer,” said Trajan coolly, and turned back to face Titus. “Captain, send word to astrometrics to devote every telescope, every camera, every device that can detect a photon, neutron, proton, neutrino, or muon to scanning the star field for the Phoenix. That fighter came from somewhere, and if I don’t have it in my possession soon, I swear I’ll bomb the planet into oblivion.” The Admiral gripped the armrests of the captain’s chair until his knuckles were white.

  Titus was taken aback. He’d never heard the Admiral raise his voice, or sound even remotely flustered. He’d always been the model of absolute control. But Trajan’s tone suggested he was quickly losing his patience.

  “Perhaps, sir, we could press Velar to lend us more direct assistance. Perhaps we could even enlist the help of the merchant ships in orbit.”

  Trajan steepled his hands in front of his face. “Yes.” He breathed in deeply through his nose, and released the held breath through his mouth with a sigh. “An excellent idea, Captain. Good work. I will contact Velar from the ready room. You will handle the communications with the merchant ships from here.” He stood up to leave. “And Captain,” he said before turning, “Did you manage to send condolences to the family of the Chief Engineer yet?”

  Titus’s back stiffened. What an odd question. And the meaning was unmistakable.

  It was a warning. Titus had crossed a line, somehow. He should have kept his mouth shut when Trajan was expressing his impatience. And now, the implied threat was obvious.

  “Yes, sir. I did,” said Titus. He racked his brain for something else to say to placate the man. The lunatic. “But I neglected to send any bonus pay. Shall I do so?”

  Trajan paused, with his back turned towards the Captain. “No. Funds are tight right now. We can’t spare anything away from destroying the Resistance.” He started walking towards the door. “Carry on, Captain, carry on.”

  Titus rubbed the back of his neck and breathed deep. They had to find that ship, for the good of his own crew. They might not survive Trajan losing his patience in the future.

  ***

  Gavin whooped as the second fighter from the Caligula burst into a fiery explosion, which was quickly snuffed out by the rarified atmosphere of the upper exosphere of Destiny.

  “Cut the noise—we ain’t done yet, Newbie,” said Lieutenant Quadri, who hit the gravitic shift initiator, shifting them in the blink of an eye to tail behind one of the two remaining fighters. Before Gavin had a chance to even aim, the ship shifted away.

  “They’re learning,” he said, as he squeezed off a few rounds at the fourth fighter, which flitted momentarily into view.

  “Yep,” said Quadri. “I guess we’ll just have to step it up a notch.” Without even a lurch, the ship stopped its forward motion and plummeted down towards the atmosphere. “What’s our capacitor charge?”

  Gavin glanced at his console. “Only
fifty gigajoules.”

  Quadri swore. “Only two or three more shifts until we’ll need to recharge. Let’s make them count. We’ll wait until one of them shifts to take us out, then we’ll move. Be ready.”

  “Got it.” Gavin gripped the controls and held his thumbs nervously over the triggers. Really, it was just like a video game. The gravitic drive accelerated all parts of their bodies at once, removing any sensation of g-forces. It seemed to detach him from the physical reality of their swerves and plunges, serving to make it seem like he was still sitting in Jet’s bunk, whipping his friend at yet another round of Starfighter.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement—one of the fighters had shifted into place just a few dozen meters away, plunging down through the atmosphere to match their speed. With a flick of a finger, Quadri shifted them over to trail the other fighter, which Gavin sprayed with a barrage of fire. It exploded with a puff of debris. Gavin peered down out his viewport to watch the body of the pilot fall into the atmosphere—he couldn’t tell if the man had ejected, or if the blast had killed him and knocked him out of the wreckage of the bird now spiraling down through the atmosphere with its owner.

  Quadri breathed deeply. “Ok, now you can celebrate.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “He shifted away when he saw his buddy skydiving.”

  Gavin whooped again. “So, you’re telling me that we just took out four fighters all by ourselves? Is that what you’re telling me?” he asked, his voice rising in excitement.

  “Looks like it, Newbie.” Quadri pulled up on the controls and pointed them back up to the line of the atmosphere wrapping the planet and gunned the accelerator. “Don’t get all cocky on me.”

  “No, sir. Of course not, sir,” he said with a mock salute.

  Quadri continued, “I mean, it was pretty badass and all—I’ve got to admit. So when we get back, the story for the rest of the P-town jocks will be that we took out eight.”