The nurse escorted her to the reception area; a typical drab colored lifeless room, complete with beige carpets and white walls.
"Do you know what I should do now?" she asked. "I mean, I should probably report to someone right?"
"Sweetie, I'm sorry but I don't," replied the nurse, "is there anything else I can do for you?"
"Do you know if there were any other survivors?"
"As far as I'm aware you're the only one who's been admitted so far. But I wouldn't give up hope - Paradigm is pretty far underground and the whole entrance section is collapsed, so it's taking them a while to get in. But I've seen people survive underground for days."
"Thanks, I guess."
The nurse left her at the medical center reception. Jess plopped herself down on one of the chairs, utterly exhausted and dazed.
"Hey." She was interrupted from her reverie by a man in a wheelchair. He looked quite young, early twenties at a guess.
"So I overheard you talking with that nurse. You survived that explosion in HQ?" He fixed her with a blue eyed gaze.
Jess nodded, dumbly. Cheeks with light stubble, short spikey brown hair - gelled of course. Cute face.
Some of my friends would kill for a date with this guy, she thought, her teenage side resurfacing for a second.
"Protocol 15. Rendezvous on the plaza, and get in touch with your CO."
"CO...commanding officer?" she asked.
"Damn, how new are you?" he replied, "You want me to show you where the meeting point is? I'm dying for an excuse to get out of here."
"Sure, I guess."
The man looked all around the hallways, "Gotta make sure that damn nurse doesn't see me," he winked at Jess.
"Right, all clear, let's shoot!" He wheeled himself furiously out of the door.
"Hey wait!" called Jess, springing out of her chair to chase after him.
As they walked along the edge of the plaza, Jess learned that the man's name was Tenzen, and he was surprised to learn that he was escorting none other than Kepp's little sister. Upon learning Tenzen was also a Paragon, Jess decided to tell her about Hao being a spy. Tenzen stopped abruptly.
"This info will have to go to Saro, shit. Uh, excuse the language," he spun his wheelchair 180 degrees, and made off towards a nearby door. Jess quickly fell into step.
She followed him as they made their way into a building along the south side of the complex, Tenzen nodded at many of the people they passed. Jess couldn't help but notice that they all wore military uniforms. They travelled deeper and deeper into the complex, passing along spotless white corridors and through many ID-locked doors which Tenzen opened.
"Uh, am I really allowed to be here?" she whispered to him.
"Don't sweat it kid, you're with me."
Finally, they entered a small open plan office, where six workers sat at their desks, surrounded by 270 degrees of super thin glass displays. Five of the workers were arranged in a pentagon. The sixth desk was located in the center, manned by a burly man wearing combat fatigues. Jess found him rather scary at first glance.
"Cozy ain't it? This is the backup operations room for Paradigm."
He began to wheel himself down a ramp to the left of the door, and Jess followed closely.
She wondered whether Tenzen actually felt embarrassed at all in his hospital gown.
"Ey! Jenson," he called at one of the operators who sat closest to them.
Probably not.
Jenson took off his headset, "Word up bro. Make it quick will ya? We got a lot on our plate right now."
Tenzen turned to Jess, "This is one of the guys that handles comms between Paradigm and Military - he can put you through to Saro."
Jenson sucked in a breath, "Well miss, this better be good, else he is going to come down here and kick your ass after all of this is over."
Jess looked at Jenson a bit blankly.
Well? Say something then, Jess!
"Uh, yeah, it's really good," she spluttered.
Godssake Jess. You're hopeless.
Jenson seemed unconvinced, but made the call anyway. He handed her the headset. Saro picked up immediately.
"What?" The tone of a man who you did not want to mess with.
Jess took a deep breath.
"Hi Mr. Saro, Sir. This is Jess, Kepp's brother and Paradigm got bombed and I was with James, uh, Sir, uh, Mr. Danuwa sir and we found out that Hao was spying and I thought I should tell you." Suddenly, something ticked in her memory.
Shit Jess! Shit! James already told him. You idiot, you wasted his time. Oh shit!
"James told me already," came the curt reply.
Shit, shit, shit!
"I'm sorry for what you had to go through. How are you doing?"
Wait, what? She snapped out of the surprise and answered.
"I'm a little shaken up, and the nurse said I had concussion. But, I'm fine, sir. Mr. Danuwa...he...he died, I had to leave him."
Jess could hear Saro sigh down the line.
"I'm sorry. Is there anyone taking care of you right now, Jess?"
"Uh, not really. Tenzen is here though..."
"Good, get him to look after you. I have to go."
"Wait, do you know how my brother is doing?" Jess spoke up suddenly, and almost wished she hadn't.
There was a pause.
"He's fine. He's on a very important mission right now, but when he gets back I'll make sure he gets time to see you."
Saro ended the call.
A somewhat bemused Jess handed the headset back to Jenson.
"So, where to now, missy?" asked Tenzen, in a playful voice.
"I, uh...well..." she looked at her shoes, still covered in dust. "Saro said you had to look after me."
Tenzen laughed - it was a pleasant sound, but that soon turned into a groan as he clutched his side.
"He got shot and they had to stitch him up, so it hurts if you poke him right there," said Jenson absently whilst he played with the program in front of him. Jess' brain couldn't help but to fixate on the screen, it looked like a diagram of a ship engine.
"What're you looking at?" she asked, curiosity piqued.
"This? PFM Drive diagram for the frigate Keysturn. Trying to work out if we can make it go faster without exploding the ship into tiny little pieces," he explained, never for a second taking his eyes off the screen.
"JENSON!" bellowed a voice from the other end of the room, "You better not be showing classified shit to non-classified people!"
Tenzen leaned in to Jess, "That's Sarge. He used to be a drill sergeant - just can't get the hollering out of his system."
Jess had to suppress a smile.
"She's with Tenzen, sir," replied Jenson, raising his rather reedy voice, "and she's Kepp's sister. And also, fuck you!"
Some of the other operators around the room chuckled.
"Sorry about all the swearing, but these guys, they're like that." Tenzen pointed at Jenson and Sarge, and twined his fingers together, grinning again.
Jess smiled.
"Hey, is my brother really that famous?" she asked suddenly.
Tenzen fixed her with that blue eyed stare again. "He's a legend within Paradigm. It's an honor to be escorting his sister around, if you'll excuse me getting all serious."
Jess gulped, she wasn't sure how to handle that information.
"Fuck yeah," Jenson raised a victory fist into the air, "Hey Charlie, what do you think of decreasing the regulator absorption rates?"
"You dickwad, you wanna risk ion bleed into the hull?" came the reply from another corner of the office.
"No, listen you turd," Jenson snapped his fingers, "we just get them to re-align the deflection field to deal with it. It's less efficient, but that only really matters for atmospheric flight, right?"
The answer was a rough grunt.
"Sarge, can you put me through to Curtis?" asked Jenson.
"You done the calcs on the time savings, Jense? It's gonna take fifteen minutes at least for them to re-align the deflectio
n field."
Jess glanced at the projected speed improvements, her brain suddenly clicked into action.
Simple application of equations of motion. Well, the numbers aren't very easy.
She grabbed a datapad off the desk and keyed in the calculations, much to Jenson's surprise as he was reaching for the same datapad.
"900 seconds, that's fifteen minutes," she announced. Jenson took the pad from her and double checked, and then he smiled and nodded his head in approval.
"Alright, go Kepp's sister! He'll be happy you were down here working this out."
Jess smiled at the small triumph. "My name is Jess." She furrowed her brows, "Wait, Kepp is on that ship?"
"Alright, go Jess!" repeated Jenson, pushing his thin framed glasses up his nose, "And uh, yes."
"Jenson, stop dicking around and make the call will you?" came the bellow from Sarge.
Chapter 13 – The Dragon’s Maw
The bridge of the frigate Keysturn held a tense atmosphere.
Cooling fans whirred softly, underpinned by the low hum of the fusion reactor. The three bridge operators manned vast panels and display screens of blinking lights and charts. Curtis sat in the captain's chair, with Kepp and Haur stood to either side, their eyes stared intensely at the speed and distance readings.
They were now only a few minutes behind Morian's transport.
In the main viewscreen, the reddish hued planet of Mars was growing larger and larger.
"We've got every spaceport scanner we could commandeer pointing at that ship - we'll find the location of that shipyard for sure," said Curtis, his deep voiced growled across the bridge.
"Unless they go to the dark side," said Kepp, referring to the opposite side of the planet to the colony - which would be out of range of the scanners.
"Sir, at the current trajectory and speed we are going to have atmospheric entry in three minutes - we need to decrease speed or else we'll burn up," said one of the operators.
"Are they decreasing speed?" asked Curtis.
"No sir, trajectory and speed are unchanged," replied the operator, with a slightly worried look.
"Then we do the same, keep going."
Curtis tapped a few buttons to open up the ship wide announcement and then spoke.
"This is your captain speaking," he began, although nobody aboard the ship could have mistaken that voice, "Atmospheric re-entry in three minutes, suit up and strap yourselves in. Curtis out."
He turned to Kepp and Haur, who were already suited up and stood at the ready.
"This bridge has inertial damping, you should be fine where you are."
Kepp nodded, impressed.
"Beauty of a ship, eh?" he remarked.
"Ain't it just," sighed Curtis.
"Message from Mars, sir," piped up the communications operator.
"Patch it in."
A face appeared on the display screen in front of Curtis.
"We've lost track of them, they've gone over to the darkside - we've dispatched land craft headed on their last known vector, but they're not going to get there in time - it's up to you fellas now."
"Anderson, you calling the shots down there now, you sonova bitch?" Kepp decided to make himself known.
"Kepp?" Anderson remarked in surprise, "Should have known you'd be involved in this. Good luck fellas. Anderson out."
"Morian should have hit atmosphere now," said the flight officer, "He's reducing speed."
"Can we get visuals, Spence?" asked Curtis.
"Negative sir, they are still out of range. But I don't know how they're entering the atmosphere that fast, it shouldn't be possible."
"Massive scan hit, sir!" shouted the weapons officer, Prem, "The shipyard is there!"
"Affirm lock," said Spence, "Applying full reverse thrusters."
The bridge was in silence for a few seconds. The Keysturn shuddered as the auxiliary thrusters provided deceleration; they felt it through the inertial damping.
"There's no way we'll slowdown in time to meet that target!" said Spence, in a rather panicked voice.
"They're not doing a re-entry; they're using the atmosphere to brake!" Curtis suddenly realized, "Give me the flight controls!"
"A-firm," replied Spence, then in a somewhat nervous tone, "What procedure is this?"
"This is the 'Hold on and hope we don't disintegrate procedure, lad," replied Curtis, without a hint of a smile.
He pointed the nose of the craft straight towards the planet, and fired full reverse thrusters. "You boys should probably go sit down," he said to Kepp and Haur, who moved to the rear of the bridge and complied without word.
"Warning, critical velocity exceeded for re-entry. Abort," voiced the bridge computer, over and over. A lot of display screens flashed red.
"Get me temperature readings on the hull," shouted Curtis at the flight operator. A ship diagram immediately popped up on the main viewscreen, the front section was colored red, and the temperature readings rose and rose.
Curtis swept his hand across the control interface, pitching the ship upwards till all they could see in the forward viewscreen was empty space. He watched the temperature diagram as the underside of the ship began to heat up, and fired the maneuvering thrusters to keep their altitude level. The bridge shook from the loads being put through the ship.
"Critical temperature warning," voice the bridge computer.
Curtis flipped the ship so it was nose down again and now heating the top side of the ship.
"Ten K to target," shouted the flight operator, who was also busy trying not to be sick.
Curtis looked at the speed reading - 500,000 km/h, with only 10,000 km to slow it down in. Too quick.
Fuck, if they can do this, I can do this.
He rotated the ship onto its side, and fired the main thruster. The bridge shook so much that he could barely see the display screens, the computer blared warnings at him about exceeding the G ratings for atmospheric flight - he ignored them. Curtis manhandled the ship into a wide series of S curves in the upper atmosphere, balancing the heat loading on either side of the ship as best he could.
The outside of the Keysturn glowed white hot, the ablative armor then began slowly disintegrating - no one had ever flown in an atmosphere at these speeds before.
"1 K to target," updated the flight officer, "they're no longer in the atmosphere!"
"Armor integrity critical," warned the computer, "Warning, ion bleed detected in Section 12."
Curtis glanced again at the speed reading: 10,000 km/h. That should do it.
He rotated the frigate nose up again, and fired the main thruster, they popped out of the upper atmosphere, and the outside of the ship began to cool. The vibrations ceased. He fired full reverse thrusters for the final approach, aiming the frigate squarely at the shipyard which began to grow in the viewscreen. Kepp and Haur were by his side again.
Spence threw up into a bin before returning to his duties.
"800 km," he announced.
"Holy shit, that thing is huge," said Kepp, looking at the viewscreen of the shipyard.
The Alpha Cybernetics shipyard was a massive structure in geostationary orbit - over 5 kilometers long and about 3 kilometers wide. It held two titanic battleships in its berths. The shadow of Mars meant no sunlight reached the yard, but the vast array of twinkling lights outlined the structures of the ships themselves. Curtis estimated each battleship to be roughly 1km long. They were comprised of a central cuboid section, upon which was built layers and layers of protruding blocky extrusions and jagged antennae. Gun turrets lined the sides of the ship, and at the front there was a gaping dark hole. Curtis guessed that that would be the missile release chute, and shuddered at the thought.
"600 km," announced the flight officer.
The Keysturn was still in full deceleration, as the shipyard now began to dominate the viewscreen.
"Sir we have been target locked," warned Prem. No sooner had he said that then they saw the telltale streaks of pulse mu
nition rounds being fired at them, coming from one of the battleships, "The armor is critical, it can't take much more of a beating."
"See what locks you can acquire, fire some shit back!" snapped Curtis.
"500 km."
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