Frontiers 07 - The Expanse

by Ryk Brown

  “Sir, Helm reports we’re ready for jump sixty-two.”

  “Very well,” Nathan answered. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Nathan’s gaze turned to the hatch that led back to the bridge. How long could he wait? How much extra time should he give his crewmen, his friends, to return. A minute? An hour? A day? Each was too little and yet too long. What if there was nothing wrong with them? What if they were simply playing it safe, letting themselves get as far out of the Herculis system as possible before jumping away? He might be leaving them behind when they were just trying to do the best job possible.

  He had considered leaving the jump shuttle behind to wait for them. Unfortunately, he had allowed Abby and the Takarans to use the shuttle to attempt to figure out how to make the mini-ZPEDs power the shuttle’s mini-jump drive directly without the problems experienced when they had tried the same thing with the Aurora. It was currently in a state of disassembly, and it would take several days to make it flight-ready once again.

  The hardest part was that, as captain, his decisions set a precedent. Whatever extra time he gave Josh and Loki he would be expected to give others. There was nothing wrong with giving them extra time. The ship was not in danger, and surely waiting another twenty minutes wouldn’t put the Earth at considerably more risk. Of this he was quite sure. Yet he was still undecided.

  A memory of Captain Roberts suddenly flashed through his mind. What was it he said? Sometimes being captain is about making the call? Was that it? Nathan decided that was it, and he rose from his desk, straightened his uniform, and proceeded to the bridge.

  “As you were,” he told the guard, cutting him off before he could announce his entrance. “Report?”

  “Jump drive is fully recharged,” Mister Riley reported. “We are approaching the jump point for jump sixty-two. Time to jump is three minutes.”

  “Any sign of the Falcon?” Nathan asked the tactical officer.

  “No, sir,” Mister Randeen answered.

  “All our spacecraft are aboard?”

  “All except the Falcon, sir. Flight reports ready to set red deck on your order.”

  “Deep-space scans?”

  “Negative contact, sir,” Mister Navashee reported.

  “Mister Chiles, recalculate jump sixty-two to occur in jump time plus twenty minutes. Let’s give our boys a few extra minutes in case they’re just running late.”

  “Aye, sir,” Mister Chiles answered. “Recalculating jump sixty-two to jump plus twenty minutes. Maintain present course and speed, sir?”

  “That’s correct.” Nathan turned back around and headed back to his ready room. “You have the bridge, Mister Randeen.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Nathan stepped back into his ready room, closing the door behind him. His pulse was racing, and he could feel a bead of sweat running down his forehead. He could not understand why granting them an extra twenty minutes had such an effect on him. He had made far more difficult decisions in the past, ones that had knowingly sent hundreds of good men to their deaths. Yet none of them had caused such a reaction.

  He was only two days from home, and he was still having to make such decisions, when all he wanted to was to hand the ship and all the responsibility that went with it over to someone else, someone more qualified than he. Was that really so much to ask?

  * * *

  Josh stood at the mouth of the cave, the mist from the nearby waterfall blowing across in front of him. He stared out through the flowing mist at the valley below. The sun was nearly down, and the entire valley was in a dark shadow cast by the opposing ridge. He could see the lights of at least four small cities twinkling through the trees as they swayed in the evening breeze.

  Overhead, four Jung fighters continued to circle the area, no doubt scanning everything below while the investigators continued studying the debris at the crash site. They had been hiding in the cave for nearly two hours now, and the smoke from the fires at the crash site had long since disappeared.

  The four circling fighters turned and headed east, their tails flashing bright as they kicked their engines up to full power. Josh tapped his comm-set. “The fighters just headed away. This may be it. Be ready to fire her up.”

  “I’m ready,” Loki announced from the back seat. He had been strapped in and ready to go for the last fifteen minutes. His helmet was on, but his faceplate was up, his gloves lying in his lap.

  Josh continued to watch impatiently, waiting for the signal. Minutes passed. One minute became two, then four, then six. He watched the time display on the handheld visual scanner more so than he did the magnified display of the valley below, until there was a bright flash. It wasn’t the one he was looking for, however. It was an explosion of some kind at the crash site. Then another one. He thought he heard the sound of distant gunfire, much like the projectile weapons that Jessica and the Aurora’s original crew had used before they had run out of ammunition and had been forced to begin using energy weapons instead. As quickly as it had started, the sounds stopped. Josh lowered the visual scanner, watching the valley with his eyes only. Then it came, three red bolts of energy weapons fire, shooting directly up in the air. He tapped his comm-set. “Let’s go!” he cried out as he turned and ran back to the Falcon.

  Loki pressed the button on his console and initiated the rapid launch sequence. This sequence used the batteries to light the turbines rather than spinning up the fusion reactors first, thereby getting them in the air more quickly.

  Josh clambered up the boarding ladder, crawling in through the busted out section of canopy just as the steps began to retract into the side of the ship. He could hear the whine of the turbines as he put his helmet on and snapped it securely into the mating collar around his neck.

  “Ten seconds to full turbine power,” Loki reported.

  Josh pulled his flight harness over his shoulders and locked them in place, securing himself into his flight seat as the ship came to life. His flight status display flickered as the power being generated by the four air-breathing turbines began to reach them, bringing them to life even before the reactors were online.

  “All four turbines are hot and ready. Spinning up the reactors,” Loki announced.

  “Here we go,” Josh announced as he applied just enough lift and forward thrust to get the Falcon to slide forward along the cave floor. He didn’t dare try to hover for fear they would smash into the ceiling and end their flight in a hurry. As the nose of the Falcon passed out of the cave, it dipped slightly. Josh applied more thrust to keep them from diving and sliding down the side of the mountain nose first. It was a bit too much thrust, however, and the rear of the ship slammed against the rocky overhang in a terrible crunching sound.

  Warning lights began to flash on Loki’s console as warning alarms sounded. “Jesus, Josh! Haven’t you banged this ship up enough?”

  “She’s not responding correctly,” he said, “but it’s okay now; we’re airborne. Josh struggled to keep them level as the spray from the waterfall and the winds coming through the canyon on their way out into the valley buffeted them about and threatened to topple them over and back into the cliff. Josh yawed the ship to port, hoping to put the wind at their backs. The wind was just enough to give them a little forward momentum. That was all he needed, as he was afraid to move the turbine nozzles away from straight vertical lift at this point. “How are we doing back there?”

  “We’re fucked!” Loki declared. “I’ve got all kinds of things going wrong! Systems are crashing all over the place, Josh!”

  “What about the jump drive? Is it working?”

  “I won’t know until the reactors are online!”

  “How long is that?”

  “Thirty seconds.” Loki looked at his tracking display as it, too, came to life. “Oh shit. Those fighters, they’re turning around. I’m pretty sure they’re coming back our way!”

  “How far out are they?”

  “A couple hundred kilome
ters, I think.”

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  “I mean I’m not sure. If this thing is working right, then they’re a couple hundred kilometers. Yup, they’re headed back toward us now. ETA, one minute.”

  “How many seconds until the reactors…”

  “Fifteen!”

  “We’re moving forward, so we’re good. Tell me you’ve got a jump plot ready.”

  “Of course. Oh man!”

  “Now what?”

  “Switch to internal emergency suit life-support,” Loki ordered.

  “Don’t tell me…”

  “Life support is fried.”

  “What does that give us, ten minutes?”

  “Reactors are hot, running jump drive diagnostics.”

  “Fuck the diagnostics, Loki! Just jump!”

  “Remember what happens if some of the emitters don’t work, Josh?” Loki yelled. “What if the half that gets left behind has the jump drive in it?”

  “Fuck,” Josh cursed as the ship nearly rolled over to starboard. “How long?”

  “Diagnostics will be done in ten seconds!”

  “And those fighters?”

  “Thirty?”

  “Will they be able to see us?”

  “Not if we stay at this altitude!” Loki promised. “Not until they are right on top of us!”

  “Well, at least there’s that!”

  Garrett picked up the long-range visual scanning device off the dead Jung technician and raised it to his eyes. He scanned the cliffs near the waterfall until he located the Falcon. It struggled to stay in the air as it drifted slowly forward. As he activated the scanner’s glare filters and reduced its brightness to its minimum setting, he couldn’t help but think that what he was seeing was not that impressive. Then without warning, a brilliant blue-white light seemed to spread across the battered little spacecraft. In a split second, the tiny ship became a brilliant ball of blue-white light, brighter than any star Garrett had ever seen. It was brighter than the midday sun, and even after it was gone, it left a red dot in his field of vision. The Falcon was gone. There were no contrails, no signs of a crash, and no debris falling from the sky. Either the ship’s reactors had overloaded and completely incinerated the ship, or their method of propulsion was just as impressive as they had led him to believe.

  * * *

  Nathan came out of his ready room and walked confidently to his command chair. “Time to jump?”

  “Three minutes,” Mister Riley reported.

  “Tactical?”

  “No contact with the Falcon, sir. Flight reports ready for red deck on your word.”

  “Comms?”

  “Nothing, sir, nothing but the usual signals we’ve been picking up from various core worlds for the last few jumps.”

  “Mister Navashee?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Very well. Red deck, Mister Randeen. Mister Riley, execute jump sixty-two on schedule.”

  “Aye, sir. Activating auto-nav. Jump sixty-two in one minute.”

  Nathan heard the sound of footsteps as someone entered the bridge. He rotated his chair slightly to the left to see Cameron and Lieutenant Yosef standing by the port auxiliary console near the exit. He could see the expression of concern on the lieutenant’s face. She and Josh had been an item for several months now. Nathan looked her in the eyes, wanting her to know that he was aware of her pain. He looked at Cameron as well, although he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was to show her how confident he was in his decisions, even though he knew it was a lie. He had never been less confident about any decision in his life. Yet he was making that decision anyway. He was making the call. He was being the captain.

  “Jumping in thirty seconds,” Mister Chiles updated.

  Nathan looked to his left at Mister Navashee who he knew was currently scanning as far out as the Aurora’s sensors could reach, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Falcon at the last moment. The look in the sensor operator’s eyes answered his question and dashed all hope.

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  Marcus sat in his small office along the port wall of the hangar deck, looking out at the forward transfer airlock that connected the main hangar deck to the starboard fighter alley. The elevator pads in the forward transfer airlocks, besides going to the deck below like all the others, also traveled all the way up through the top of the Aurora’s hull to act as launch and recovery pads. It was this pad from which Josh and Loki had departed in the Falcon over fifteen hours ago. At any moment, the alarm horn would sound telling everyone to clear the pad before it started its journey upward to recover the Falcon upon its return. He had been sitting there for hours, his door open the entire time, pretending to be reviewing reports on his data pad.

  He remembered the day Josh’s mother had died while working in the ore processing plants on Haven. It had been an accident, a stupid accident. But it had happened on his watch, which made it his responsibility. Because of that, he had taken it upon himself to pick up the woman’s only child, little Joshua, from school. When he told Josh what had happened to his mother, the little boy had never cried. The only emotion he had ever shown was to look up into Marcus’s eyes and ask him who would be taking care of him now. From that point on, Marcus had taken care of him. He had been a handful, going from a little snot running around the processing plant to a cocky, smart-ass hotshot pilot burning through a copilot a month, right up until Loki came to his left seat. From that point on, the two of them had been like brothers. Josh seemed the younger, crazier brother, and Loki the older, more responsible one that kept the younger brother from going too far. The boy had been a pain in Marcus’s butt from day one, but he was the closest thing to family that Marcus had ever known.

  Then it happened, a sharp pain shot through his teeth. At that moment, he knew that the Aurora had jumped, and Josh and Loki had not made it back in time. He stuck out his foot and pushed his office door closed so no one could see him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Captain?” Vladimir called from the ready room hatch.

  “Yes?” Nathan responded without looking.

  Vladimir entered the ready room and closed the hatch behind him.

  Nathan continued looking at his data pad. “If you’re going to ask me how I am, you needn’t bother.”

  Vladimir moved over to the desk, taking a seat. “It’s okay to be upset, Nathan. We all are. Having to leave Josh and Loki behind, well, it sucks.”

  “Yes, it does,” Nathan said. “But in four more jumps we’ll be home, and I can hand the keys to someone else. The ‘suck’ will be over.”

  “Sometimes, you do not make sense to me, Nathan,” Vladimir said. “One moment you’re the captain, larger than life and full of confidence; the next moment you’re pouting like a spoiled, little boy that does not want to eat his vegetables. Do you really hate being captain that much?”

  “Most of the time, yes,” Nathan admitted. He looked up from his data pad. “It’s great to have everyone look up to you, to salute you, to call all your own shots, and to be in charge of your own fate. But you see, there’s a catch. You’re in charge of everyone else’s fate as well. Sometimes, you’re even in charge of the fate of people you’ll never know. That’s the part that sucks, Vlad.”

  “I was wrong; you’re not like a spoiled, little boy,” Vladimir said as he leaned back in his chair and put his feet on Nathan’s desk. “You are more like a little girl. A whiny, crying, spoiled, little girl.” A big smile appeared on Vladimir’s face, his eyebrows shooting upward as if to say, ‘What do you think of that?’

  “Nice,” Nathan responded. “Is that the way you talk to your captain?”

  “To Captain Plaxa, yes.”

  “I’m not even going to ask what that means.”

  “It means crybaby. To me, you are Captain Crybaby.”

  “Great. Anybody ever tell you that you suck at pep talks?”

  “Come on, Nathan,” Vladimir begged. “You were a great captain. You defeated
an entire empire! What happened to you?”

  Nathan leaned back in his chair. “The closer we get to home, the more I realize how much I hate about being captain.”

  “Then hand command over to Cameron. She’d love that.”

  “Yeah, that would look really good on the old resume, wouldn’t it? I can see the headlines now. Senator’s son resigns command two days from port. That’ll help my father’s political career.”

  “Who cares about his political career? That’s his problem, not yours.”

  “Tell him that.”

  “You make everything way too complicated, my friend.” Vladimir dropped his feet to the floor. “Listen to me, Nathan, you cannot worry about what anyone thinks about you or your father. In the end, you only answer to yourself. You are a good man. Do what you think is right.”

  “I don’t know, Vlad,” Nathan disagreed. “I’ve done some very bad things.”

  “This is sometimes the role of men, especially leaders,” Vladimir said as he rose from his seat. “My job here is done. Now I must return to my duties.” Vladimir turned and headed for the exit, stopping and turning back around by the hatch. He rose his hand in mock salute. “Captain Plaxa.”

  Nathan offered a hand gesture of his own. It wasn’t a salute.

  * * *

  “Jump complete!” Loki announced.

  “Turbines have shut down!” Josh reported.

  “That’s because there’s no air in space,” Loki remarked.

  “I know, I was just saying…”

  “Fuck!” Loki shouted as another warning system began to flash. “Contact!”

  Josh looked at his tracking display. “What is that?”

  “It’s a Jung warship! The one that was on its way out of the system!”

  “Where are we?” Josh wondered.

  “We’re still in the system. We only jumped a few light hours out.”