Frontiers 07 - The Expanse

by Ryk Brown

  Marcus could feel himself becoming lighter as the artificial gravity on the pad lessened.

  Once the canopy had slid forward, the emergency boarding ladder dropped out of the starboard side of the Falcon. It was no more than two metal rungs hanging out of the side of the ship, but it was enough for the medical specialists to climb the side and reach the unconscious flight crew.

  “Pop his face plate!” the medical specialist ordered as he reached for Josh’s face plate. “They need air!” A moment later, both face plates were off, and their helmets were in the process of being removed.

  “This one’s breathing!” the rescue man called out. “Pass me some oxygen!”

  “His name is Loki!” Marcus yelled in anger and frustration. “The other one is Josh!”

  “This one’s not!” the medical specialist reported as he handed the oxygen kit to the rescue man behind Loki. “Pass me another O2 kit and an intubation package,” the medical specialist at Josh’s side added. “And give me the suction bag; he’s got puke everywhere!”

  One of the other medical specialists passed the requested devices to the one attending to Josh. The man dropped them in Josh’s lap and immediately began suctioning out Josh’s mouth. Then he grabbed one of the other kits and pulled out a small device. He inserted the device and activated it, immediately connecting it to the oxygen bag sitting in Josh’s lap. “Tube is in. Auto-respirator is running.”

  Marcus could hear the sound of the auto-respirator as it rhythmically filled Josh’s lungs with oxygen.

  “Tele-pack is connected,” the medical specialist reported as he attached another device to Josh’s suit electronics. “Toss me a pre-filled.”

  One of the medical specialists on the deck tossed a pneumo-jet up to the medical specialist attending Josh. He quickly injected something into Josh’s neck. “Ph stabilizer on board.” The medical specialist stepped back onto the starboard wing-body, making room for the two rescue men. “This one’s ready for extrication,” he announced as the elevator pad began to slow. The first rescue man moved forward and began unhooking Josh’s flight harness in preparation to remove him from the spacecraft.

  The elevator finally came to a stop at the hangar deck. A dozen rescue workers and deckhands rushed onto the platform, carrying additional gear and pushing boarding ladders.

  “No gear!” one of the deckhands called out. “Bring in the shorties!” A moment later, the taller boarding ladders they had originally brought in were replaced by shorter models.

  Marcus watched as half a dozen men worked together to raise Josh out of the cockpit and carry him down the boarding ladder. His body was limp and lifeless, and his face was ashen and covered with blood and vomit. His blond hair was wet and matted. Marcus looked over one of the medical specialist’s shoulders as he pulled open one of Josh’s eyelids and shined a light in his eye.

  “Pupils are dilated and sluggish!” the specialist reported. All Marcus could see was that Josh’s eyes were terribly bloodshot.

  Within minutes, Josh lay on a rescue gurney with tubes and monitoring leads connecting his body to the gurney’s underside. Moments later, he was rushed away to medical, leaving Marcus standing there.

  Master Chief Montrose came up and stood beside Marcus, putting his hand on his friend’s shoulder in a show of support. As he did so, they rolled Loki past him as well. Loki’s eyes were also bloodshot, but he was awake and looking right at Marcus as they rolled him past. For a moment, he could have sworn he saw a smile on Loki’s face, but it was hard to tell under the oxygen mask.

  “Come on,” Master Chief Montrose told Marcus. “Let’s get you over to medical.”

  * * *

  The treatment room was empty of patients except for Josh and Loki. Marcus had sat between the two of them for the better part of the day. Nathan had come and gone, choosing to spend as much time in medical as possible. Lieutenant Yosef had spent most of her off-duty time at Josh’s bedside as well but had insisted on working her normal shift.

  Nathan, on the other hand, had been more than happy to let his XO cover him as much as she could. He had already authorized a change in course in order to recon the Alpha Centauri system before returning to Earth, and jump sixty-three had already been executed. Two more jumps would bring them just outside the Centauri system, after which, one more jump would finally get them home.

  Nathan’s first instinct had been to skip Alpha Centauri altogether and get back to Earth sooner rather than nearly a day later. One just naturally assumed that a hospital on Earth could provide better treatment than the medical department on a starship. However, in the case of the Aurora and her Corinairan medical staff, that was not the case. In fact, Josh and Loki probably could not be in better hands, short of being back in the Pentaurus cluster.

  Over the hours, Nathan had come to know Senior Chief Taggart a lot better. He wasn’t as gruff and unintelligent as some believed. In fact, he was quite wise, having a broad range of life experience. Underneath his loud, opinionated exterior beat the heart of a kind, old man. He just hid it well. Nathan found that he quite preferred such a person to the posturing, pompous, political types that he had grown up around. At least with Marcus, you knew what he truly thought, because he flat out told you so with no reservations. He was a brutally, but refreshingly, honest person.

  Even Tug, a man whom Nathan had come to see as a mentor of sorts, had carried a hidden agenda of his own. He was a man of few, but carefully chosen, words—words that effectively placed in the listener’s mind the thoughts Tug most wanted that person to have. He wished that his own father—the senator and possibly, by now, the president—would speak in such a masterful fashion. Like most politicians, he had a tendency to speak around a topic instead of about it.

  Nathan felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Cameron standing next to him. He rose from his chair and followed her out of the treatment room and into the corridor.

  “How are they doing?” Cameron asked.

  “They’re stabilized for now,” Nathan told her. “Loki was in and out of consciousness for a while. They sedated him so that the nanites could do their thing—something about them not being able to work on brain cells that were currently in use or something.”

  “They’re both better off not being awake while the nanites are working. It was bad enough having them poking away at my insides. I can’t imagine what it would feel like in my head. What about Josh?”

  “He is worse off. Abby thinks it’s because he was in the front seat. Most of the canopy around him was broken away, nothing but frames and a few shards of clear canopy. Loki, on the other hand, still had most of the canopy around him. Abby thinks that, because of this, Josh had more direct contact with the jump fields.”

  “And that’s what injured him?”

  “That, the cold of space, hypoxia, massive levels of CO2. Think about how much energy is dumped into those jump fields. I’m surprised he’s still alive.”

  “So am I. We just finished reviewing their flight records. They used the new multi-jump algorithm that the Takarans came up with. They made one hundred twenty-two jumps in an open cockpit in under ten minutes. The last series was eighty-seven jumps, all at three and a half second intervals. It’s unbelievable.”

  Nathan’s head dropped in shame. “I should have waited.”

  “Nathan, they were three hours late. How long were you supposed to wait? You had to think of the mission, the crew. Everyone knows that, even Josh and Loki.”

  “Perhaps.” Nathan lifted his head, looking toward medical. “I wonder if Marcus knows it.”

  “I’m sure he does as well.”

  “Any idea why they were so late to begin with?” Nathan wondered.

  “We haven’t gotten that far back in the flight records yet.”

  Nathan sighed. “How long until our next jump?”

  “Jump sixty-four took place a few hours ago,” she said, checking her watch. “Sixty-five is a little over four hours away.”

 
“And that will put us one jump from Centauri?”

  “Correct. I think it would be wise for both of us to get some rest before then. We know there are Jung in that area, so we should be ready.”

  “I’d like a staff meeting before the next jump to review the ship’s readiness before we jump into a potentially hostile area.”

  “I’ll schedule one to take place an hour before the next jump. Maybe you should get some rest.”

  “No way I could sleep,” Nathan told her, “not now.”

  “Maybe get something to eat then.”

  “I’ll be fine, Cam,” he assured her as he prepared to return to the treatment room. “I’ll see you at the briefing.”

  Nathan left the corridor and returned to the treatment area, again taking a seat across the room from Josh and Loki. He leaned back in his chair and watched as the Corinairan nanite specialist and his technician wheeled in the nanite control scanner and positioned it over Josh. Cameron had once described to him in great detail what it felt like to have the microscopic robots working to repair you on the inside. It had not sounded pleasant at all. He had to wonder why the Corinairan doctors were so insistent that one could not feel the nanites working inside when there was firsthand evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it was something unique to Terrans or to Commander Taylor herself.

  Nathan closed his eyes to ease the burning. He had been awake for twenty hours now, and they had been stressful hours at that. He let his mind drift to other thoughts: to his family home in the hills outside Vancouver, to the lazy summer days playing with his friends, to weekend hockey games on the frozen ponds of his youth, and finally, to returning to everything he knew to be home.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Loki should have a full recovery,” Doctor Chen announced. “He will need nanite therapy for some time and, therefore, will require constant monitoring, but we are confident he will fully recover.” Doctor Chen paused, looking around the briefing room. “Josh is in much worse condition. Due to his position in the cockpit, he was more exposed to the jump fields and suffered far more tissue degradation as a result. He has significant cerebral edema that has required constant management, and there is significant damage to the portion of his brain that controls voluntary motor control.”

  “What is his prognosis?” Nathan asked.

  “He is breathing on his own again, which is a very good sign. But we are keeping him in an induced coma to allow the nanites to work on the damaged areas of his brain. He may have to stay that way for weeks. Until then, we can’t be sure.”

  “Has Loki regained consciousness yet?” Nathan wondered.

  “He had some semi-lucid moments as his sedation began to wear off, but we’re keeping him sedated as much as possible as well, although not as deeply as Josh.”

  “When will he be able to remain conscious for longer periods? We’d like to hear what happened to them.”

  “A few days, I suspect.”

  “We have gone through all of their flight records for the 72 Herculis mission. Of course, they only tell us what maneuvers they performed and what damage they sustained. It doesn’t tell us why,” Major Prechitt explained. “We still have to go through the Falcon’s video recordings and threat tracking logs. We should know a bit more after that.”

  “What do you think happened to them?” Nathan asked.

  “Based on the flight records, it appears they were ambushed as they passed between the inhabited planet in the 72 Herculis system and one of her smaller, closer moons.”

  “How were they discovered?” Nathan wondered. “When she’s running cold and dark, the Falcon is nearly impossible to detect.”

  “It appears they were forced to do a short burn in order to avoid an unforeseen moon. Based on the moon’s orbit and speed, I don’t think they were able to see it when they originally plotted their flight path through the system. Less than a minute after that burn, they dropped thermal decoys, performed some interesting maneuvers, went to full power, and made a run for it around the far side of the planet. I’m guessing they were trying to use the planet as a visual shield to hide their escape jump from their pursuers. However, they were forced to dive straight down into the planet’s atmosphere as more enemy contacts rose from the planet’s surface directly ahead of them. They managed to lose them in a series of canyons, but then things become somewhat confusing.”

  “How so?” Nathan asked.

  “Well, they had a sudden dramatic loss in altitude that, quite frankly, doesn’t match any aerodynamic forces or patterns that I’m familiar with. At the same time, they lost nearly all power in their turbines. Next, two of the turbines seemed to recover, while the other two kept threatening to fail.”

  “Were they hit?”

  “No, sir. As best we can tell, the two turbines failed because they were full of water.”

  “A sudden rain storm?”

  “That dumped large amounts of water in a single spot?” the CAG responded. “Unlikely.”

  “Maybe they skimmed a lake or a river or something,” Cameron suggested.

  “At the speed they were flying, I doubt they could have done that and remained airborne,” the CAG told her. “Besides, while that might explain the water, it doesn’t explain the sudden extreme loss of altitude. I did notice, however, that just before the sudden drop in altitude, Josh overrode the automatic thrust vectoring system, swung all four turbine ducts straight down, and brought them to full power.”

  “So whatever caused the sudden drop in altitude, he saw it coming and was trying to counter it,” Nathan surmised.

  “That’s what I thought as well. I think something forced him downward suddenly, perhaps into a lake or river. This caused them to take on water quickly which led to a crash landing. There was a lot of damage to the top of the Falcon as well, so maybe another ship rammed him from above in an attempt to force him down.”

  “It does make you curious, doesn’t it?” Nathan stated.

  “A few hours later, they lifted off again and quickly jumped away. With very little emergency oxygen in their suits, they were forced to make two multi-jump sequences. The first one to get to the rendezvous point, the next to get to the Aurora’s next layover point.”

  “Why don’t those suits carry more oxygen?” Cameron asked.

  “The Takaran flight suits were not designed to be used outside of the interceptor for long periods. They only carry enough oxygen to make an emergency transfer between two spacecraft in case they need to be rescued from a damaged ship. We looked at adapting the Corinari flight suits, but they require a much larger ejection seat that would not fit into the Falcon’s cockpit.”

  “Thank you for your report, Doctor. Please keep us informed of their condition.”

  “Yes, sir,” Doctor Chen assured him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to return to medical.”

  “Of course.”

  “Captain,” Jessica began as the doctor left the briefing room, “I would like to point out that the Falcon’s mission has provided us with an amazing amount of intelligence. We now have ground images of surface civilizations, combat footage, and real-time flight dynamics data on Jung fighters. We even have the optical and thermal signatures of three Jung warships, as well as the signatures of their radar sets. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Fleet Intelligence is gonna flip when they see this stuff.”

  “I agree, Captain,” Major Prechitt said. “My flight combat analysts are pouring over this stuff as well. Having never studied anything other than Takaran battle tactics, they are truly enjoying the new challenge.”

  “Hopefully, the price of this intelligence won’t end up being too high,” Nathan commented solemnly. He turned to Vladimir, hoping to move the meeting along. “Lieutenant Commander, how are we doing with the upgrades to our weapons systems? Will we have the plasma cannon turret operational before we get back to Earth?”

  “Doubtful,” Vladimir said. “We didn’t have enough power conduit available to run additional lines to power the weapon
. Lieutenant Montgomery and his team are adapting one of the mini-ZPEDs to power the weapon directly. It should be ready for test firing by the time we reach Earth.”

  “What about the torpedo tube upgrades?”

  “The port upgrade in tube two is complete. We still have to install the separating bulkhead in the starboard bay before we can use the plasma cannon in tube four at the same time as conventional torpedoes in tube three. We have yet to start on the conversion of tube six.”

  “And the rest of the weapons systems?”

  “All rail guns are in proper working order.”

  “Major Prechitt,” Nathan said, turning to his CAG next, “how go the training flights?”

  “Quite well, sir,” the major answered proudly. “Both our launch and recovery cycle times have improved, and my pilots have been developing both their intercept and dogfighting skills. We have also been developing numerous defensive tactics for protecting the Aurora against enemy fighters.”

  “What about attacking larger ships?” Cameron wondered.

  “As the Talon fighters were originally designed to intercept and harass larger ships in orbit over Corinair, our pilots are already well versed in such tactics.”

  “That’s good to hear, Major,” Nathan said. “It will be interesting to compare the flight tactics of the Corinari and EDF pilots.”

  “My staff is looking forward to the exchange.”

  “Commander Taylor, how is our propellant holding up?”

  “With the emergency course change to rescue the Falcon, we’ve burned a bit more than anticipated. However, we should still arrive in Sol with more than enough to park her safely in orbit over Earth.”

  “How will our recon of the Alpha Centauri system affect our reserves?”

  “We’ve already made the course change to intercept the Centauri system,” Cameron explained. “The largest use of propellant, other than our final deceleration burn in Sol, will be when we leave Centauri. That requires a ninety degree turn. If the Falcon had not been damaged, we could’ve sent it in without altering our own course, thus saving considerable propellant.”