by Ryk Brown
“What the hell, Loki?!”
“It’s not like I had much control over the direction we were jumping, Josh!”
“You still could have jumped us farther!”
“The farther the jump, the more chance of error…”
“We weren’t trying to hit a target, Loki!” Josh complained. “We were just trying to escape! How far out is he?” he asked as he pushed his throttles forward.
“Half a million kilometers, but I don’t think he’s seen us.”
“I got no power, no maneuvering!”
“The spaceflight systems aren’t online yet,” Loki reminded him. He began the startup sequence for the main drive.
“Why the fuck not?”
“We did a rapid launch sequence, remember? Rapid launch on the ground doesn’t include spaceflight systems. It assumes you’ll fire those systems up as you climb out!”
“Shit!” Josh yelled in frustration. “Do we have any forward momentum?”
“A few meters per minute…”
“Jump us again!”
“By the time he gets anywhere near us…”
“He doesn’t have to get near us, Loki!” Josh interrupted. “Even the Aurora’s rail guns can reach half a million klicks, and we’re barely moving!”
“How far do you want to jump?”
“The farther the better!”
“Scanning forward,” Loki reported.
“Come on!” Josh begged. They were unarmed and adrift. Once the enemy ship spotted them, it would take little effort for them to target their weapons and blast them into oblivion.
“We’ve got a clear jump line,” Loki announced as he locked in an emergency escape jump. “Jumping in three……”
Josh checked the status of the main drive. It would take another minute for it to spin up.
“Two……”
Maneuvering was ready, but Josh knew he couldn’t touch it until after the jump.
“One……jumping,” Loki announced.
Josh closed his eyes as the ship jumped. A moment later, he looked down at his tracking display. It was clear, and the threat indicator light had turned off. “Where are we now?”
“Just outside the 72 Herculis system,” Loki reported. “We’ll have mains in forty seconds.”
“How much time?”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” Loki admitted. “The systems are acting all screwy.”
“What do you mean?”
“According to this, it’s four o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Check your watch,” Josh suggested.
“It’s busted, shattered during the crash. What about yours?”
“I gave it to Garrett, remember?”
“What about the handheld visual scanner? That displays the time, doesn’t it?”
“I left it in the cave,” Josh admitted.
“Great, so we have no way of knowing if we’re early or late.”
“We jump to the rendezvous point,” Josh said. “If they’re still there, we’re early. If not, we’re late.”
“Mains are coming online,” Loki announced. “But take it slow, Josh. The inertial dampeners are offline.”
“Got it.” Josh pushed the throttles forward a tiny amount. Even then it was enough to push them back into their flight seats with considerable force.
“I said take it easy,” Loki grunted.
“That was easy!” Josh argued. “It was only one percent.”
“At this rate, it will take hours to get up to a decent speed.”
“So we just jump our way back to the Aurora. She can slow down to match us so we can land.”
“You don’t understand,” Loki said. “At this speed, it will take ten times as many jumps to reach the Aurora.”
“Then we do ten times as many jumps.”
“We’ve only got ten minutes of oxygen left, Josh.”
“So start jumping!”
“The rendezvous point is four light years away. We’ll have to make—I don’t know—forty jumps maybe? I can’t plot and execute that many jumps in ten minutes, Josh!”
“Can’t you just set it to dump the maximum amount of energy into the jump fields and keep pushing the button to repeat the same jump over and over again?”
“The upgrades!” Loki realized.
“What?”
“The upgrades! The Takarans made a bunch of upgrades to the jump drive software, like the auto-nav!”
“Don’t remind me,” Josh complained. “I hate that thing.”
“They also added a multi-jump algorithm that allows us to perform several jumps in rapid succession. The idea was to use the ZPED to power the jumps, so the Aurora wouldn’t have to recharge between jumps. If it had worked, she could’ve made the trip back to Earth in a few hours instead of a few weeks!”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“We make short jumps without recharging!”
“No shit!”
“They tested the algorithm with this ship!”
“Where were we?”
“The day we went down to Takara to visit Tug and Deliza,” Loki explained as he began scrolling through the selections in the jump drive’s sequencing computer. “It’s in here!” Loki quickly calculated a course back to the rendezvous point and punched it into the flight computer. “I’m sending you the course for the rendezvous point! Get us on course and push the throttle as much as we can stand while I program the multi-jump algorithm.”
“That I can do,” Josh replied as he altered course. “How many jumps do you really think it will take?”
“It looks like thirty-six, give or take. We’ll stop after thirty-four and get an accurate fix on our position.”
“Will we make it in ten minutes?”
“We’ll make it in three, Josh,” Loki said confidently.
“Sounds good to me,” Josh declared. “Throttling up another one percent.” Again they felt the force of acceleration push them harder back into their seats.
“Fuck, Josh,” Loki grunted. “I can barely breathe as it is!”
“Suck it up, Loki. We need the speed.”
“I can barely punch in the numbers,” Loki grunted as his arms strained against the acceleration.
“Stop complaining. You’re wasting air.”
“That should do it,” Loki announced. “Thirty-four jumps at max power. That should put us within a jump or two of the rendezvous point.”
“Let’s do it,” Josh groaned as he struggled against the force of acceleration pressing him into his flight seat.
“Drop both your sun visor and your auto-darkening visor,” Loki said. “Close your eyes tight and keep them closed. We’re going to be doing a jump every five seconds, and we have no canopy to help protect us.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know what effect all those rapid jumps will have on us,” Loki told him.
Josh swallowed hard as he dropped his visors. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “I’m ready.”
“Starting multi-jump sequencer,” Loki announced as he closed his eyes and pushed the button. The first jump flash went off, sending a tingling sensation through his body. “Shit! Did you feel that?”
“The tingling?” Josh replied as the second jump flashed.
“Yeah!”
“Is that normal?” Josh asked as the third jump flashed.
“I don’t know. Kind of scary though.”
“Any idea if it’s working?”
“Well, if we can feel it…” Loki said as the next jump flashed.
“I meant, are we jumping forward?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to open my eyes and check.” Another jump flashed.
“How many jumps was that?” Josh asked as the next jump flashed.
“Six or seven, I think.”
“My head is starting to feel funny,” Josh told him as he continued keeping his eyes shut tight.
“Lightheaded?”
“Yeah,” Josh answered.
“M
e, too.”
“I kind of like it,” Josh admitted.
“Not me.”
“Try not to think about it,” Josh told him. “A few more jumps and the Aurora will be hailing us on comms.”
“I hope you’re right,” Loki said. “I’m starting to get nauseated.”
“How many jumps have we done?”
“I’m not sure; I lost count. Fifteen, maybe?”
Josh squinted his eyes even tighter, shaking his head to fight the increasing dizziness he was feeling. Flash after flash, the jumps kept occurring in five second intervals. He wondered if the effects might be less if the jumps were ten seconds apart. He was sure it would, as every time the jump occurred, his symptoms got worse. Then, just as they started to subside, the next jump would come. “This pretty much sucks,” Josh said. Between the dizziness and the constant force of acceleration, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to remain conscious.
“I’m not going to make it,” Loki called over the comms.
“Hang on, Lok!” Josh encouraged. “Just a few more jumps.” Josh felt his stomach begin to churn. A wave of cold washed over him with the next jump flash, followed by a surge of nausea that became worse with each subsequent jump. “Oh, God! I’m gonna puke!”
“Hold it in!” Loki warned. “You’ve got to hold it in!”
“Fuck, stop it! Please! I can’t take this!” Josh cried as his head began to throb. He began counting the seconds between each flash, hoping to distract himself from the discomfort, but all it did was make it worse. Then it was over.
“Oh thank God,” Loki declared.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Loki answered as he opened his eyes and checked the jump control console. “Thirty-four jumps in three minutes.”
Josh opened his eyes and raised his visors. “Everything looks the same except for the blue-white blotches in front of my eyes.”
“Yeah, I’ve got them, too. It worked though.” Loki checked his suit levels. “Could you back off on the throttles a bit, Josh? I think we’re using up our air faster than we should.”
“No problem,” Josh told him as he pulled back slightly on the throttles. He began to feel lighter as the thrust levels decreased. “I’ll leave it at one G for now.”
“That’s better,” Loki agreed. “One more jump should do it. Just give me a second.”
“Take your time,” Josh told him. “I’d like to get at least some of my color back before we land.”
Loki smiled as he plotted the last jump. “Ready to jump.”
“Let’s do it,” Josh said as he lowered his visors once more.
Loki placed his finger over the button and lowered his visors with his free hand. “Jumping.”
One last flash washed over them, bringing back that same tingling sensation as the first one.
“They’re not so bad when they’re farther apart,” Josh said. “Don’t you think, Loki?” Josh waited for a response. “Loki?”
“She’s not here,” Loki mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“The Aurora’s not here.”
“Are we in the right spot?”
“We’re only two thousand kilometers from the rendezvous point,” Loki told him. “They should be right here.”
“Maybe they’re nearby,” Josh said as he turned on his comm-set. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Aurora, this is the Falcon. We are damaged and running out of oxygen. Requesting rendezvous. Repeating: mayday, mayday, mayday. Aurora, this is the Falcon. Do you copy?”
“It’s no use, Josh. She’s not out there.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ve scanned in all directions. She’s not there. We must be too late.”
“Maybe we’re just in the wrong spot.”
“I’ve checked our location three times, Josh. We’re in the right spot.”
“Maybe we’re early.”
“Doubtful. We’d have to be seven hours early. The Aurora is already at the next layover.”
“Fuck!” Josh screamed. “What are we going to do?”
“We keep jumping.”
“They’re ten light years away, Loki. What are we going to do, make another hundred jumps?”
“I’m thinking more like ninety.”
“I don’t think I can take ninety more jumps, not every five seconds.”
“Actually, it would be every three and a half seconds this time. We’ve only got six minutes of oxygen left, and we need at least a minute or two to land, maybe more.”
“Okay, it’s official now. This officially sucks!”
“Wasting oxygen, Josh. Wasting oxygen.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. For the first time in his life, he felt hopeless. “Let’s get this over with.”
Loki finished punching the new parameters into the multi-jump sequencing algorithm. “Josh, if this doesn’t work…”
“Shut up and push the button,” Josh told him as he dropped his visors again.
“Better kill the mains first, just in case we pass out,” Loki suggested.
“Good idea.” He pulled the throttles back to zero. “At least we won’t have to deal with that at the same time.”
Loki dropped his visors once more. “Jumping in three……”
“Thanks for sticking with me, Lok,” Josh said.
“Two……It was my pleasure……One……”
“Sorry for nearly getting you killed so many times.”
“No, you’re not.”
The Falcon jumped, then again three and a half seconds later. She kept jumping over and over again. Josh felt the tingling sensation return, followed by the lightheaded feeling, the nausea, and the throbbing headache. It all built up so much faster this time. He quickly lost count of the jumps. “Loki! How are you doing back there?”
“Fuck!” Loki cried in anguish.
“Fuck!” Josh cried back as he squinted his eyes even tighter. He crossed his arms and grabbed tightly at his flight harness, pulling his head down as much as he could in his helmet, as if he were trying to touch his chin to his chest. He felt as if his head were about to explode, and his stomach was being twisted into a knot. A few flashes later, he felt his nose start to bleed. His mouth opened and his stomach emptied into his helmet… not once, but twice. The stench inside his helmet was awful. He thrashed his head about, trying to get the chunks of vomit to stick to either his head or the inside of his helmet so that he wouldn’t suck them back into his lungs as he struggled to breathe. His eyes began to hurt. He felt like they were swelling up to enormous size. He screamed out in pain but couldn’t hear himself over the sound of Loki’s own screams coming over the comm-set in his helmet. Finally, Loki’s screams stopped as he finally succumbed to the pain and passed out. Josh envied his friend, praying for unconsciousness to take him as well. Eventually, everything went dark, and there was nothing but the agony. A moment later, his wish was granted.
* * *
“We know we were ambushed in the Oort,” Jessica said, from the couch in the captain’s ready room, “so we know that the Jung at least suspect that the Earth is trying to develop a superior propulsion technology. The fact that they only had two gunboats waiting for us suggests they didn’t know exactly what that propulsion technology was.”
“Or that they simply didn’t have any other ships in the area,” Cameron said.
“No, she’s right,” Nathan said. “Just before our first jump, Captain Roberts said that the Jung had invaded the Alpha Centauri system six months prior. They must have had ships in that area for several months beforehand. Even their slowest ships can do ten times light, so it’s only five and a half months to Sol.”
“Those gunboats can do twenty light,” Jessica pointed out. “Even their heavy cruisers can do fifteen. I don’t think they knew exactly what we were up to, and that’s why they didn’t commit anything larger than a couple of gunboats. They were saving everything they had in the area for the invasion of Alpha Centauri. If that test jump had
taken place a few months later, we might have been staring down a couple of Jung battle platforms.”
“I thought those were just rumors,” Nathan said.
“Nope, recon confirmed them,” Jessica told him. “I saw them mentioned in the stuff that Fleet sent over for Captain Roberts, the stuff that was time and location locked.”
“Then perhaps she is right,” Nathan said to Cameron. “We need to recon the Alpha Centauri system on our way home.”
“I hope you’re not thinking about coasting through like the Falcon,” Cameron said.
“I was thinking more along the lines of standing off and collecting images from outside the system. Maybe jump around the outer perimeter to get images from different angles.”
“Still seems risky.”
“Isn’t risk part of our job?” Jessica asked.
“Of course,” Cameron said. “It’s just that we’re so close to home.”
“I, of all people, am anxious to get home and hand everything over to Fleet,” Nathan reminded her. “I just keep thinking that if Captain Roberts were here, he’d reconnoiter every damn system he could before returning to Earth.”
Cameron begrudgingly nodded her agreement. “I’ll work up a mission profile and run it past you before the next jump.”
“That’s in what,” Nathan looked at his watch, “three hours?”
“More like two and a half.”
“Better get on it, then,” Nathan told her.
“Aye, sir.”
“I’ll help you,” Jessica offered, rising from her spot on the couch.
“Captain, Tactical!” Mister Randeen called over the intercom. “Contact!”
All three of them instantly charged out of the ready room and onto the bridge.
“It’s the Falcon!” Mister Randeen reported. “She just jumped in about two million kilometers off our starboard beam.”
“Comms!” Nathan called as he made his way to his command chair. “Any word?”
“No, sir. No answer to hails.”
“We’re picking up their telemetry now, sir,” Mister Navashee reported. “She’s badly damaged.”
“Recommend general quarters, sir,” Cameron urged. “They may have been followed.”
“Sound general quarters,” Nathan ordered. “Helm, turn into them and slow to two hundred thousand kilometers per minute.”
