As the shuttle continued to turn so Nathan saw in orbit around the giant planet an enormous space station, sufficient in size to dwarf New Washington, that he knew must be Polaris Station. He was once again surprised to notice how harsh was the light even this far away from the sun, and how stark the contrast between illumination and darkness. One side of the station was entirely black and lost to sight against Saturn’s equally darkened bulk. The other flared brightly in the sunlight, which glinted of metal and glass and other exotic materials he had never heard of as the craft eased its way toward the station.
Polaris was shaped somewhat like a gigantic metal mushroom, a huge cap littered with thousands of tiny pin-prick lights from which extended a thick vertical shaft that tapered to a point with a second, smaller cap upturned and attached to the bottom, as though the entire station were a pendulum suspended in orbit around the planet.
‘Why isn’t it spinning like New Washington?’ he asked.
Helena Sears noted Nathan’s gaze.
‘Polaris is equipped with mass-driven internal gravity so it doesn’t need centrifugal force to keep everybody’s feet on the ground inside. It gets its energy from Saturn’s own gravity, which is much stronger than Earth’s. That lower cap at the bottom of the shaft is constantly being pulled more than the cap at the top because of the difference in gravitational influence from the planet on the opposite ends of the station. That difference is manipulated by the station’s internal systems, generating electrical energy.’
Nathan scanned the station and realized how slowly they seemed to be closing in on it.
‘How big is this thing?’ he asked.
‘It’s about twelve kilometres in height,’ Foxx replied. ‘CSS really know how to build the big ones.’
Nathan nodded, and then he saw another form looming alongside Polaris. From the rim of the main cap of the station were extensions with flashing lights on their corners. Most were empty, but beneath the shield of one he could see a huge vessel, more than a kilometre long if Foxx’s estimation was correct, and all at once he knew what he was looking at.
‘Titan,’ he said as he leaned across from his own seat.
The battleship was immense, a broad and flat forward hull tapering down into a mid-section that was flanked by two strakes where Nathan guessed on instinct that the ship’s enormous engines resided. Her hull was capped with a bridge and what looked remarkably like a radar panel not dissimilar to warships from Nathan’s own time, but the sheer scale of Titan overwhelmed him.
‘She’s in dock,’ Helena observed as she peered out at the ship. ‘Probably waiting for us.’
‘That ship is waiting for us?’ Nathan asked.
‘Nice to be important, right?’ Foxx pointed out. ‘It’s not often the fleet sits on standby waiting for a four hundred year old pain in the ass.’
‘Respect your elders,’ Nathan said as Foxx watched the shuttle turn and head directly toward the dock.
‘We’ll land directly aboard the ship by the looks of it,’ she said. ‘Let’s be ready to give a good impression, understood? I doubt the admiral will be happy at being held up waiting for us.’
The shuttle eased alongside Titan and then touched down inside, and they unbuckled from their seats as a thick, curved door folded down and revealed a vast landing bay. Four armed Marines in black combat gear, all with glowing left eyes filled with military-grade ocular implants appeared at the door, their rifles cradled in their grasp as Foxx led Nathan out into the ship’s cavernous bay.
Nathan saw rows of what could only be fighter aircraft parked nearby, sleek, aggressive looking machines with raked wings and wicked looking cannons on the tips, tricycle undercarriage and long teardrop shaped canopies. Crews of technicians were working on them, some human, others mechanoid.
‘This way,’ a Marine sergeant beckoned.
Nathan walked alongside Foxx as the Marine escort led them out of the bay and toward an elevator bank. They crammed inside and were escorted up several floors before the doors opened onto what Nathan guessed was the bridge entrance, more Marines guarding a pair of heavy looking doors. These were physical doors, not the hard light versions, and Nathan realized that even with all of their technology there was still nothing like a few inches of steel to keep an enemy at bay.
The Marine escort led them to the heavy doors and immediately one of the guards entered an access code via his optical implant, his eye flickering as he entered the data and the doors slid open.
Titan’s bridge was a large oval with two floors, one elevated back from and above the other. Dozens of staff worked at stations around the upper floor, overlooking the lower where several more manned stations were arranged around a central seat that logically, Nathan figured, belonged to the captain. Nathan looked around fascinated at the bridge as they were led down to the central chair where an old man sat with his hands on a series of complex looking controls.
‘That’s not the captain,’ Foxx said as she gestured to the back of the man’s head, ‘he’s the helmsman and he’s wired into the ship.’
Nathan leaned to one side and saw a thick bunch of what looked like optical fibres travelling out of the man’s head and into his seat.
‘Ugh, seriously?’ Nathan asked. ‘Why?’
‘Speed of thought is faster in battle due to adrenaline,’ she explained. ‘The helmsman can react faster than if a captain were to issue orders and he were to react manually, so the best helms always get wired in. They tend to be those who get on best with the captain, so they already think alike and virtually act in concert.’
Nathan looked about. ‘So where’s the captain?’
‘He’s here.’
The voice came from nearby and Nathan turned to see Admiral Marshall. He was shorter when standing than Nathan had expected him to be, robust and with gray hair cropped short to his scalp. The line of his jaw was hard as though chiselled by the ordeals he had faced in battle, the lines in his face sculpted by a lifetime of war.
‘Ironside,’ Marshall rumbled, his hands remaining behind his back. ‘You’re the reason my ship wasn’t in orbit around Neptune a half hour ago.’
‘My apologies, Admiral,’ Foxx said. ‘We got here as fast as we could. When you’re ready, just let us know what you need from us and we’ll comply.’
Marshall regarded them for a brief moment and then growled softly as though to himself.
‘All hatches sealed, hull secure, all ahead one third. Take us out, Master Harris.’
The helmsman moved his hand gently on a silvery lever and Nathan felt something subtle change about the ship around them, became aware that they were moving even though there was nothing to show that they were.
Foxx looked up at something and Nathan turned to see a huge display screen that had appeared from nowhere, and upon it a panoramic view of the dock in which Titan resided now moving slowly past them.
‘We’re underway,’ Harris said quietly to the captain, ‘all ahead one third.’
‘Take us directly to jump gate one,’ Marshall said, his hands still behind his back as he surveyed their course. ‘Report when ready for super luminal.’
‘Aye sir,’ Harris replied.
Marshall turned to Foxx. ‘The three of you, with me.’
Marshall turned and walked across the bridge to his quarters, which like all battleships were housed within a few paces of the bridge deck. Nathan followed with Foxx and Helena, and the bustle of the bridge was replaced by the calm solitude of a small but well-lit cabin. The door slid shut behind them and Marshall sat down behind a polished mahogany desk that was uncluttered but for a holographic display shimmering in mid-air above it and a smaller moving image of a family of four: Marshall, and what Nathan took to be his wife and a teenage son and daughter.
‘Why are you here?’ the admiral asked Foxx.
‘Sir, we believe that somebody aboard has been using military grade drones as weapons on Earth, primarily to hunt down Nathan. We don’t know why, but we believe that i
t must have something to do with the plague. We know that it may seem absurd, but one of your crew could be behind the attempted homicide and perhaps even the attack on me of several days ago.’
Marshall did not reply. Instead he accessed a file from his logs and allowed it to play on the holographic screen before them. Nathan saw an image of a long, bulky looking spacecraft that was set against a backdrop of stars, her hull a shabby looking red colour and tiny lights visible across her flanks.
‘Proteus,’ Foxx identified the craft, ‘one of Neptune’s mining stations.’
Marshall nodded. ‘It’s not the mining vessel we’re worried about though. It’s this.’
The image changed to another, larger ship, and Foxx gasped.
***
XXVIII
‘Icarus, the lost colony ship,’ Foxx said as she pointed at the image. ‘They found it?’
‘It found them,’ Marshall explained, ‘civilian vessel, she left the solar system twelve years ago on a run to Epsilon Indi.’
Nathan could not quite judge the scale of the vessel in the image, but something told him that it was immense. The lights were windows, and even the most basic estimation he could make up suggested that the ship was perhaps a kilometre in length, perhaps more.
‘She’s not been heard from in that time’, Marshall added. ‘Until now.’
‘Don’t your spaceships communicate with each other?’ Nathan asked.
‘Vessels can break the light barrier, but communications cannot,’ Foxx explained. ‘Once a ship is in super luminal cruise, it’s unable to communicate with anybody else. If messages need sending across interplanetary space, it’s quicker to send a ship than a signal.’
‘The ship’s distress signal is still activated,’ Marshall explained, ‘and is broadcasting an emergency message that nobody wanted to see. This feed contains some very disturbing images.’
Before Nathan or anybody else could decide whether they wanted to see those disturbing images, the captain played them anyway.
The image of Icarus vanished to be replaced by one of a middle-aged man. He wore a similar uniform to that of Admiral Marshall, with less decorations and rank insignia on his collar, but Nathan almost backed away from the display as he saw the state of the man’s body.
The flesh was falling from the captain’s face in thick, glooping chunks as though his body were melting from within. His hair was tumbling from his scalp in clumps, his teeth spilling from between bloody lips as he cried an agonizing last few words.
‘…plague… ship…. Avoid… Aleeyans…’
The captain’s collapsing form shuddered as his jaw split away from his skull and one of his eyeballs dangled from within its orbit and seemed to drain away down his uniform as his terrified last words deteriorated into a tortured mess. The long snake of his tongue slithered from his throat and disintegrated before their very eyes, his entire body degenerating within its uniform and slumping out of sight on its seat.
The signal feed cut off and a disgusted silence filled the quarters as they all stared in horror at the spot where the captain’s image had been moments before. Marshall lowered his head in deference to his fellow captain’s plight for a moment.
Nathan felt his guts twist with nausea as he fought to erase the horrific image from his mind and focus. ‘Is that the plague you’ve all been talking about?’
Helena nodded, her features twisted with disgust and anxiety.
‘Captain Dwight was supposed to be immune to it, just like us,’ Marshall said. ‘We suspect the Aleeyans have modified the very virus that nearly exterminated humanity and have unleashed it upon us once again. We’ve already imposed a security zone of one planetary diameter around the vessel and patrol ships are awaiting our arrival.’
‘To do what?’ Nathan asked.
Marshall stood from his seat.
‘We don’t know whether this is a test of the virus or whether it’s already been placed planet side, so we’ll have to send people aboard her to check it out alongside Doctor Schmidt, who was beamed aboard just before we jumped into super luminal.’
Nathan spoke up. ‘I need to be on that mission too,’ he said.
‘You’re needed here,’ Marshall replied. ‘The doctor will want to run further tests on you to examine your immunity to the virus. We can’t afford to expose any of you to this new plague yet, it might kill you.’
‘And the new plague is in there,’ Nathan said, trying not to think about the gruesome image of Captain Dwight’s demise. ‘If you need somebody to test it upon, you need me. Nobody’s blood has been tested more than mine. If anybody can generate antibodies to the virus, it’s me.’
The room fell silent as the admiral and Foxx stared openly at Nathan.
‘You saw what happened to Dwight,’ Marshall said.
Nathan sucked in a nervous breath. ‘I don’t belong in this time,’ he said. ‘My home, my family, everybody I loved and cared about have been dead for four hundred years. I have nothing here.’
‘Nathan?’ Helena interjected, concern etched into her features, but Nathan waved her aside and kept talking.
‘I’m alive, but the man I was died the day I was placed into that capsule. If you need to check this virus out, to use what’s left of the person that was Nathan Ironside to find a cure, then it’ll happen a lot faster if I’m in there and not stuck here.’
Marshall regarded Nathan with new respect in his eyes, and then looked at Foxx.
‘If that’s your wish, then Lieutenant Foxx and Doctor Schmidt will accompany you on that mission. We can’t be certain that the reason for the attempts on your life are not connected to what’s happening now with the Aleeyans.’
Nathan glanced at Foxx and saw her eye twitch in annoyance.
‘Make sure he stays out of trouble,’ he warned Foxx as he stepped away from the table and marched for the bridge. ‘If this was an Aleeyan attack, this ship will be officially at war.’
Marshall strode past Nathan and he turned to follow as Lieutenant Foxx fell in line alongside him and they followed the captain out onto the bridge.
‘Are you serious?’ Foxx whispered as they walked. ‘I risked my life to save your neck and now you want to end it all?’
Helena’s voice whispered from behind them. ‘Subject exhibits traits of hero complex, an ego-driven desire to impress others.’
‘Somebody’s got to check that virus out,’ Nathan whispered back with grim determination, but then he peered over his shoulder at Helena. ‘I guess you didn’t know I was such a hero, right?’
‘I didn’t know you were such an idiot,’ Helena replied. ‘D’you really think nobody here cares about you? You don’t have to do this.’
Nathan didn’t get the chance to respond as Marshall barked orders to his crew and Nathan saw a large display depicting Saturn and its orbiting moons, along with the massive military station. A small blue icon portrayed Titan as she moved out of close proximity to her home base and prepared to launch into super luminal cruise.
Across the ship, Nathan heard a voice echo as a female ensign made an announcement.
‘Mass drive engaging in ten seconds.’
Admiral Marshall had moved to stand alongside the helmsman, and he could see streams of data displayed across the main viewing panel before them all. The elegant curve of Saturn’s horizon and her spectacular rings that glowed in the light from the distant sun slowly moved out of sight below them as vast swathes of blackness punctuated with countless billions of stars filled their view.
‘Five seconds,’ the ensign announced, ‘four, three, two, one, engage!’
Nathan looked instinctively at the screen and was surprised to see nothing at all. A distant but tangible hum rumbled through the immense battleship and he spotted a series of graphics displaying what he presumed were engine data rise up. The view out of the main panel remained apparently static for several long seconds and then it briefly turned pure, bright white before plunging into absolute blackness.
&nbs
p; ‘Super luminal velocity achieved,’ the ensign reported to the captain. ‘All engineering stations report normal parameters. Time to Neptune orbit: seventeen minutes, reducing to nine minutes at destination.’
Nathan frowned. ‘How’d they figure that? And why didn’t all the stars turn to streaks like in the movies?’
A tiny smile curled from Foxx’s sculptured lips as she replied.
‘You’re kinda cute sometimes with your funny ideas, you know that? Faster than light travel means that all light information is stripped away from the object travelling at that velocity: there’s nothing to see but blackness. Same goes for communications, we can’t see or hear from anyone or anything.’ She turned for the elevator banks. ‘Likewise, once super luminal the ship can continue to accelerate indefinitely, so our ETA at Neptune will keep counting down.’
Nathan shoved his hands into his pockets as they walked. ‘I liked the streaky star bit. Where are we going now?’
‘Sick bay,’ Foxx said. ‘Doctor Schmidt will already be there.’
The journey to the sick bay took only a few moments in the elevators, and after getting their security clearance from the two Marines guarding the bay, they entered the laboratory.
‘Where is he?’ Nathan asked as he walked inside. ‘I thought they said he’d been beamed aboard?’
‘He’s right here!’ said a voice inside Nathan’s head and he jumped in fright as Schmidt emerged from within him.
‘Will you cut that out?!’ Nathan snapped.
‘You find anything yet?’ Foxx asked as she spotted the remains of the drones on Schmidt’s work bench.
Schmidt shook his head. ‘Nothing but some markings erased by whoever got hold of these drones,’ he admitted.
Foxx and Nathan looked at the underside of the drone, and saw three faint letters stencilled into the metal underside.
Old Ironsides Page 19
