Frontiers 07 - The Expanse

by Ryk Brown

  “Vent and scrub the chamber,” Lieutenant Montgomery ordered.

  Nathan looked at Vladimir. “When the weapon fires, it vents toxic gases into the chamber,” Vladimir explained. “The compartment must be ventilated to space and repressurized before anyone can safely enter the chamber.”

  “That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” Nathan said.

  “These cannons were not designed to be used in an enclosed space,” Lieutenant Montgomery reminded them. “Accommodations will have to be made.”

  “Will this interfere with our regular torpedoes?”

  “Currently, yes,” Vladimir answered. “Since we do not have auto-loading systems, no one would be able to enter the chamber to load conventional torpedoes. However, assuming the weapon passes all tests, we have plans to install a secondary bulkhead to allow us to manually load conventional torpedoes while using the plasma cannon.”

  “You’re going to add a wall?” Nathan wondered.

  “It is not as difficult as it sounds,” Vladimir assured him.

  “Data is coming in now,” the technician reported.

  Nathan stepped up to the display, noticing the potential energy of the shot. “That was at ten percent power?” he asked, pointing at the display.

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Montgomery answered proudly.

  “Nice,” Nathan congratulated. “Very nice indeed. How long do you need to prepare for calibration?”

  “A few hours,” Vladimir answered.

  “We jump in one, then you’ll have a seven-hour window in which to calibrate that thing. Assuming that it works, how long will it take to install the other two tubes?”

  “About a week for each,” Lieutenant Montgomery stated.

  “Excellent. Carry on, Lieutenant,” Nathan ordered.

  * * *

  “I believe it’s safe to revive him now, Captain,” Doctor Chen said.

  Nathan looked at the old man lying on the medical bed. His hair was long and gray, and he had a rough, untrimmed beard. He was thin and appeared frail, which Nathan understood to be the result of the failing neuromuscular stimulation systems in the man’s stasis pod.

  “I wonder how he’ll react,” Nathan said. “I mean, he’s been in stasis for eight hundred years.” Nathan turned to the doctor. “Do you think he’ll react badly?”

  “If by badly you mean with a lot of emotion and disbelief, then yes,” Doctor Chen answered. “However, he is still under selective muscular paralytics. They were necessary to keep him still while the nanites repaired damage to his major organs and skeletal muscles.” She paused and looked at Nathan. “Shall I?”

  “Yes.” Nathan watched as Doctor Chen administered the stimulant into the patient’s intravenous line.

  “It should only take a moment or two to take effect,” she announced as she put away the syringe.

  “Imagine, this guy was around during the plague,” Nathan said in amazement. “He witnessed the collapse of civilization.”

  “You are such a history geek,” Jessica mumbled, rolling her eyes.

  The old man’s head moved slowly from side to side as his eyes began to squint at the bright lights in the room. Doctor Chen quickly turned off the overhead examination light, making the illumination in the room considerably less bright. The old man’s left eye cracked open wider, looking at Jessica. “Either I’m dreaming…” he mumbled as he closed his left eye again. His head rolled back to the right as his right eye opened to the sight of Nathan and Vladimir. “…or it worked.” The old man’s head rolled back to the left and both his eyes opened. He looked Jessica up and down for a moment. “Well, since you’re not naked, I guess I’m not dreaming.” Jessica smiled as the old man’s eyes closed and his head rolled back to center. “What year?”

  “What?” Nathan asked.

  The old man coughed. “What year is it? I just came out of stasis; what the hell did you expect me to ask?”

  “3472,” Nathan answered.

  The old man opened his eyes, looking directly at Nathan. “Bullshit.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Then you’re not bullshitting me?”

  “No, sir, I’m not,” Nathan assured him. “The year is 3472.”

  “I knew it might take a while, but I didn’t expect 3472.” The old man tried unsuccessfully to raise his left hand. “Hey, why can’t I move my arms? Or my legs for that matter?”

  “You were given targeted paralytics to keep your body immobile during regenerative treatment,” Doctor Chen explained. “They will wear off soon, and you will be able to move again.”

  “You must be the doctor, then,” the old man surmised.

  “Yes, sir, I am Doctor Chen, the ship’s chief medical officer.”

  “Ship? What ship?”

  “You’re on the United Earth Ship, Aurora,” Nathan tried to explain.

  “United what?”

  “United Earth…”

  “The only thing united about the people of Earth was that they were all on the same hunk of rock,” the old man objected. “Where’s the captain?”

  “I am the captain,” Nathan stated, “Captain Nathan Scott of the Earth Defense Force.”

  “Defense? Defense against what?”

  “Sir, try to relax,” Doctor Chen urged. “You’ve been in stasis for a long time. A lot has changed.”

  The old man closed his eyes again as he tried to deal with the onslaught of information. Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked at Nathan. “You don’t look old enough to be a captain.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. This is my chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy, and my chief of security, Lieutenant Commander Nash.”

  “Chief of security?” the old man asked in disbelief. “You’re too hot to be in security.”

  “Lulls my adversaries into a false sense of security,” Jessica answered with a wink.

  The old man chuckled. “I’ll bet it does at that.” He coughed again. “What about the others?” he asked. “Did any of them make it?”

  Nathan’s expression turned grim. “I’m afraid not, sir. I am sorry.”

  The old man closed his eyes and mumbled softly, “Damn.”

  “It is a miracle that you survived,” Doctor Chen commented, trying to ease his pain.

  “Ain’t no miracle about it, Doc,” the old man insisted. “I chose to survive. I was just lucky enough to have the tools to do so.”

  “May I ask your name, sir?” Nathan’s tone had become more serious.

  The old man looked at Nathan. “Percival, Jonathon Percival.”

  “Do you feel up to answering some questions, Mister Percival?”

  The old man closed his eyes again. “Perhaps your questions could wait, Captain. I seem to be under the influence of your futuristic medications at the moment.”

  “Of course, Mister Percival. I will check back with you later.” Nathan looked at the others, gesturing for them to follow him out of the room.

  Nathan waited until Doctor Chen closed the door behind them before speaking. “Doctor, how long until he’s more himself, mentally that is?”

  “There’s no telling, Captain. We don’t know what his normal mental state was, so we have nothing to compare it to. I suspect that after the paralytics wear off and he’s had time to clean up a bit, he will feel more up to conversation.”

  “Sir,” Jessica interrupted, “if I may make a suggestion?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t interrogate the man. After all, as far as we know, he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Three hundred people died in their stasis pods while the others died on the surface,” Nathan argued. “Someone did something wrong.”

  “For all we know, he knows nothing about it,” Jessica defended, tilting her head back toward the medical treatment room where Mister Percival rested.

  “Then why didn’t he ask specifically about the mission?” Nathan said. “He asked about the others, but not the colony or the mission. He knew something we
nt wrong.”

  “He could have surmised that by the fact that he is on another ship and not in the colony where he expected to wake up.”

  “And why didn’t he seem more surprised that he’d been in stasis for so long?” Nathan asked.

  “He did accept that fact rather easily,” Vladimir added.

  “All I’m saying is that there is a better way to go about this. If you start asking him questions, he’s going to become defensive.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “Invite him to dinner,” Jessica suggested with a sinister grin.

  “I can make Golupzi,” Vladimir said.

  “We want him alive,” Nathan jeered.

  “Let him get cleaned up and put on some fresh clothes. Give him some self-respect. People are more relaxed when they’re eating; they’re more likely to talk. Get him to talk about himself, the mission. It worked on Haven.”

  “She’s right,” Vladimir admitted.

  “Very well, invite him to dinner in the captain’s mess at eighteen hundred hours. I’ll have my cook find something from his time period in the Ark files.”

  “No Golupzi?” Vladimir asked.

  “We’re inviting him to dinner, Vlad, not torturing him.” Nathan turned to look at Vladimir. “Shouldn’t you be installing some plasma cannons or something?” He turned back to Jessica. “All right, we’ll try it your way. Senior staff and Mister Percival. Meanwhile, search the Ark files and see what you can find out about Jonathon Percival.”

  “I’ll take a look, but don’t hold your breath. I don’t think they have records on every single human being that lived in the core.”

  “Try anyway,” Nathan instructed Jessica. “And you invite him. He seems to like you better.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  * * *

  “Jump fifty-nine complete,” Loki reported.

  “Position verified,” Lieutenant Yosef added. “We are now fifty-seven light years from Sol.”

  Nathan smiled at the lieutenant. She had been announcing their distance from home ever since they left BD+25 3252. They had been jumping their way home for more than two weeks now, and the knowledge that the Earth was now only a handful of jumps away was having a positive effect on morale, at least for the Terran members of the crew.

  For Nathan, it was a mixed bag of emotions. On the one hand, he dreaded the endless documentation and questioning that he and his crew were sure to undergo, but on the other hand, the idea of turning over the ship and all the responsibilities that went with it created an overwhelming feeling of anticipated relief. He had never wanted to be in command. Unlike his father, Nathan did not see himself as a leader. There had been times during his tenure as the Aurora’s de facto captain that he had enjoyed his role, but those times had been few and far between. The decisions he had been forced to make and the lives that had been sacrificed as a result would haunt him for years to come, most probably for his lifetime. He could justify each and every one of them quite logically, but logic did not help him sleep at night.

  “Captain, I’m picking up the same transmissions as before,” Lieutenant Yosef reported.

  “Those from the last layover?” Nathan asked. As they had grown closer to the core worlds, they had begun picking up various signals. However, thus far, they had been too weak to decipher with any certainty.

  “Yes, sir, but they’re stronger now. I think I might be able to make them out this time.”

  “How long?”

  “I can tell you where they are coming from now. 72 Herculis. It’s a G-type system located forty-seven point eight light years from Earth. It’s about ten light years from our current position.”

  “72 Herculis is listed in the Ark as a fringe settlement,” Jessica added from the tactical station. “The fourth planet was settled and named Tanna.”

  “What do we know about the settlement?” Nathan asked.

  “At the time the Ark was locked down, the Tanna settlement was only twenty-two years old. Population of seven thousand, mostly miners and their families as well as infrastructure support personnel. It was a corporate colony started by one of the interstellar mega-corps. It was intended to be an industrial base to support colonization efforts farther out in the fringe.”

  “Put the local star map up,” Nathan ordered. A moment later, a three-dimensional view of the core and all her worlds appeared on the main view screen.

  “At forty-seven light years, isn’t it already pretty far out, even for a fringe world?” Lieutenant Yosef wondered.

  “Just before the bio-digital plague struck, the mega-corps were preparing for another colonization push. A few hundred habitable worlds had been cataloged, some as far as two-hundred light years out. With improved FTL drives on the horizon, the mega-corps were betting on another wave of eager colonists willing to sell their souls for a chance to start a new world. An industrial base on the edge of the fringe would have made a lot of money, as it would have gotten goods out to the new worlds faster and cheaper than hauling them out from the core worlds.” Nathan examined the star map on the main view screen, taking note of the relative positions of all the stars along their route back to Sol. “Any updated data on the settlement?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” Jessica told him.

  “Captain, I’m looking at multiple signals here,” Lieutenant Yosef announced, “civilian comm, navigation, entertainment broadcasts. I’m also picking up transmissions on Jung frequencies.”

  “Ship-to-ship?” Nathan wondered.

  “No, sir. I’m pretty sure they’re automated navigational transponders.”

  “Then we can assume that it’s a Jung-controlled system,” Jessica stated.

  “According to Fleet intel, they all are, except Sol,” Nathan reminded her.

  “Fleet’s intel on the influence of the Jung is based mostly on limited signals intelligence, sir. They had only a dozen or so FTL recon flights prior to our departure. 72 Herculis has never been reconnoitered.”

  “Think we should check it out?” Nathan asked his security chief.

  “We should at least send the Falcon on a coast-through,” Jessica suggested. “If we’re lucky, there might even be a Jung ship or two in port there.”

  “If we’re lucky, there won’t be,” Nathan commented.

  “Captain, Fleet has only seen eight actual Jung warships to date, not including the gunboats that jumped us in the Oort. Three of those were the same design. Knowing how spread out their ships actually are could be extremely valuable information. Don’t forget: we still don’t know exactly where the Jung homeworld is located.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me,” Nathan admitted. “What if it’s 72 Herculis?”

  “Doubtful, sir. All indications are that their homeworld is on the other side of the core based on the density of signals collected by Earth thus far.”

  “Be even better if we could get boots on the ground for a few days.”

  Nathan turned and looked at Jessica who was smiling. “Don’t even think about it, Lieutenant Commander.” Nathan turned back to his flight team sitting at the helm in front of him. “Wake up your relief team, boys. You’ve got a recon mission to fly.”

  “Hell yeah,” Josh exclaimed.

  Loki rolled his eyes. “I thought you hated recon flights?”

  “Anything is better than this jump-wait-jump crap.”

  “We’ll see if you still feel that way after fourteen hours sitting in a cold, cramped cockpit,” Loki mumbled.

  * * *

  “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea,” Cameron stated as she took her seat at the dining table in the captain’s mess. “It takes about fifteen hours to do a coast-through recon pass. That’s a long time for us to sit in one place waiting for them to return.”

  “They’re going to meet us at the next jump point,” Nathan told her. “That way, we won’t lose any time.”

  “And if they are detected? Wouldn’t that alert the Jung to our presence in the area?”

/>   “It might alert them to a presence in the area, but there’s nothing on the Falcon that screams Earth technology.”

  “Except the jump drive,” Cameron reminded him.

  “They are well aware of their responsibilities in the matter, Commander.”

  “Are they, Nathan? It’s not like they swore an oath or anything.”

  “Not everyone requires an oath to make them do the right thing, Cameron. Josh and Loki know the stakes. I’m confident they would be willing to sacrifice themselves rather than be captured. I shouldn’t have to remind you that they’ve both demonstrated their willingness to put their lives on the line on more than one occasion.”

  “It’s just that Josh takes such great risks without even thinking about them.”

  “Actually, I don’t think he does,” Nathan defended. “I think he’s confident in every maneuver he makes. He doesn’t see the risk, because he knows it will work. It’s a gift, really.”

  “Or a curse,” Cameron added.

  “That’s why he and Loki make such a great team. Loki sees the risk and reminds Josh of it when necessary. You might say Loki is Josh’s Cameron.”

  “Is that how you see me: unwilling to take risks?”

  “Not at all,” Nathan said. “I tend to make decisions based on instinct; you tend to fully analyze your options before deciding. I think that’s why Captain Roberts put us together to begin with. He knew that your analytical side would properly balance my instinctive side. Whenever you question my decision, it makes me think twice. If you agree with me, then I’m that much more confident that I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Because I’ll call you on it if you’re wrong,” Cameron said.

  “Exactly. I can count on you to tell me when I’m wrong.”

  “Well, rest assured, sir, I’ll always be there to tell you when you’re being stupid.”

  “I said wrong, not stupid.”

  Cameron picked up her glass of water, concealing the smile on her face.

  “What did we miss?” Jessica asked as she and Vladimir entered the captain’s mess.

  “Nathan was just telling me that it was my job to tell him when he’s wrong,” Cameron announced.