by Ryk Brown
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance it could be flight-ready in a few hours,” Nathan asked.
“Not a chance,” Vladimir answered.
“I thought ship captains were supposed to be able to ask for miracles from their chief engineers,” Nathan teased.
“Only in the movies, sir,” Vladimir responded.
“Captain, we’ll be okay on propellant,” Cameron assured him. “If we weren’t, I’d let you know. We’ve come up with a flight plan around the Centauri system using a series of short jumps with small turns in between. In addition, since the jump to Earth is only four and a half light years, we’re going to perform a deceleration burn during each turn. By using a series of short, decelerating turns, we’ll only use half the propellant compared to performing the maneuvers separately.”
“That’s good thinking, Commander.”
“Of course, if we run into trouble and are forced to defend ourselves, it had better be a short engagement.”
“Noted,” Nathan said. “How long until we jump?”
“Jump sixty-five is scheduled for fifteen twenty.”
Nathan looked at his watch. “That’s in about forty minutes, people. Let’s make sure everyone’s ready. It’s our last mission before we hand the ship back over to Fleet, so let’s make it a good one.”
* * *
“Jump sixty-five complete,” Mister Riley reported.
“Verifying position,” Mister Navashee reported from the sensor operator’s station to port.
“Threat board is clear,” Mister Randeen added.
“Position verified,” Mister Navashee announced. “We’re at the first turn, two light-months outside of the Alpha Centauri system.”
“Begin the first recon series, Mister Navashee,” Nathan ordered.
“Aye, sir, beginning passive thermal, radio, and optical scanning.”
“Will the opticals be of any use from this distance?”
“Yes, sir. The Aurora had very good optical telescopes to begin with, but the digital enhancement the Takarans provided greatly increased its range. At this distance, we could pick out and ID a ship our size up to about four light-months.”
“Impressive. Too bad we couldn’t go farther, though,” Nathan said. “I’d love to have a look back at how the Jung took the system nine months ago.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Comms, record all broadcasts emanating from the target,” Nathan instructed Naralena at the comms station.
“Yes, sir,” Naralena answered.
“Mister Willard,” Nathan said, turning his attention to the usually unmanned electronic countermeasures station. “It’s good to see you back.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“How are the ECS algorithm experiments going?”
“Very well, sir. We may be ready for live testing soon.”
“I’m sure the EC community at Fleet will be very interested in your proposals. Meanwhile, with radar and scanner signatures, I’d like you to monitor and collect any signals you think might be indicative of jamming or other countermeasures coming from the Alpha Centauri system. We’ve only encountered a few Jung ships since returning to space, so the more information we can collect about their electronic countermeasure capabilities, the better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Time to full charge, Mister Riley?” Nathan asked.
“Sixty-five was only an eight light year jump, so about four hours to full recharge, sir. After that, each layover will only be an hour as we work our way around the system.
“How soon will we be starting our deceleration turns?”
“Not until the next jump, sir. Then we’ll be doing a continuous deceleration turn as we work our way around the system, during all eight mini-jumps.”
“Very well,” Nathan stated as he sat down in his command chair. “Mister Randeen, put the system on the main view screen, maximum magnification.”
“Aye, sir,” Mister Randeen answered from the tactical station. “Using starboard camera number two.”
The main view screen shifted its view thirty degrees to starboard and zoomed in on the Alpha Centauri system. Nathan could easily make out the primary and secondary stars in the binary system, shining far brighter than any other stars on the screen. “Where’s Proxima?” he wondered.
“Proxima Centauri is currently passing behind the system’s primary star,” Mister Riley reported. “Besides, it’s more than six light-months away from us, and it’s not very bright, so I doubt we could pick it out clearly from this distance.”
“Of course,” Nathan said. “And Sol?”
“It’s off our starboard beam right now.”
Nathan took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Hard to believe we’re almost home,” he admitted.
“It must feel good, sir,” Mister Riley commented.
“It does. I didn’t realize how homesick I actually was until recently. Seems the closer we get to Earth, the more homesick I become. How about you, Mister Riley? Ever get homesick?”
“We’ve only been gone a few weeks, sir,” Mister Riley answered. “I’ve made interplanetary runs that were longer.”
“Are you looking forward to seeing Earth?”
“In as much as it is the birthplace of humanity, yes, I am.”
“If you could go anywhere on Earth when you got there, where would that be?” Nathan asked.
“I’d like to see old Scotland, sir. The Celtic blood runs deep through the Corinairan people, so it’s sort of a homeland for us—the birthplace of our culture. I think a lot of us would like to go there.”
“I’ll see what I can do to help get you all there,” Nathan promised.
“Thank you, sir.” Mister Riley turned his chair to face the captain. “Have you ever been there, sir?”
“No, I’m afraid not. But I hear it’s beautiful. It’s not a popular tourist attraction, however.”
“Why is that?”
“It was completely wiped out by the plague: Scotland, England, Ireland, all the British Isles. Many escaped to the European mainland, but it was deserted for centuries. People only started migrating back a few hundred years ago, so it’s not as heavily populated as the rest of Europe.”
“A shame,” Mister Riley stated.
“One of many, really.” Nathan rose from his seat. “Mister Randeen, you have the bridge. I’ll be in my ready room.”
“Aye, sir,” Mister Randeen reported.
“Let me know if you spot anything interesting, Mister Navashee.”
* * *
Nathan walked into workshop number four in the Aurora’s engineering department. It was the only shop space left on the ship that wasn’t being used by Takarans working to upgrade different components on the Aurora. Of all his new crew, the Takarans seemed to be having the most fun. They greatly enjoyed taking the Aurora’s antiquated technology and making it more efficient. Some of their solutions were so simple, it was embarrassing for Vladimir at first. He had begun avoiding working directly with them for this reason. Eventually, he got used to it.
In the middle of the room stood Mister Percival’s custom, long-term stasis pod. Several panels had been removed, and a large section of its internal electronics had been pulled out while still connected in order to gain access to the various circuit boards.
“What is it you wanted to show me?” Nathan asked as he circled the stasis pod in search of Vladimir who was on the opposite side. He wore a special visor that was linked to the ship’s computer system in order to help him identify various components of the pod.
“Ah, Nathan,” Vladimir said. The special visor magnified his face from Nathan’s perspective, making his eyes appear enormous. Vladimir lifted the visor as he spoke. “I’ve finished my analysis of Mister Percival’s stasis pod. I must say, it was a very well-designed system. Very solidly constructed, which is not surprising considering its origin.” Vladimir tossed a small circuit board to Nathan.
Nathan caught the circuit board and examin
ed it. “Aren’t these Cyrillic characters?” He looked at Vladimir, who smiled. “Let me guess; it was made in Russia?”
“Of course,” Vladimir said with a shrug.
“Is that what you dragged me down here to show me?”
“Nyet. I wanted to show you this.” Vladimir tossed another circuit board at him, this one even smaller.
“What’s this?”
“Can you read?”
Nathan looked at it again. “It says LOGMEM00517A-CHRONO-B.” Nathan looked at Vladimir. “So?”
“It is a memory board for use in the stasis pod’s log system. This one is specifically for keeping time records. It is the backup timelog memory chip from this pod.”
“And?”
“Why is it not in Russian like everything else in this pod?”
“Because the Russian one was broken, so they replaced it with one from a country that spoke English?” Nathan tossed the circuit board back to Vladimir. “Seriously, Vlad.”
“I checked the other pods, they were all made in the former United States, as was this memory board. I think someone replaced the previous memory board with this one. They probably pulled it from another pod, one that had been running for two hundred years.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t,” Vladimir admitted, “not positively. But there is one minute missing from the incremental log on this memory board. The missing minute occurred approximately eight hundred years ago.”
“So you think someone changed the board to make it look like the occupant of the pod had been in stasis for the entire trip, instead of since the time that the colonists died.”
Vladimir looked at Nathan with relief. “Finally.”
“So Mister Percival was lying about being in stasis the entire time?”
“Or he is not Mister Percival.” Vladimir picked up a data pad. “I was curious, so I borrowed this from Jessica.”
“What is it?” Nathan wondered.
“It’s the log from the Jasper colony,” Vladimir told him, “at least the portions that we were able to recover. It has several recordings of communications with the Jasper in the very early days of the colony, before the shuttle crash.” Vladimir played the recording and held it up for Nathan to see.
Nathan watched the split screen recording. On the left was an image of one of the colonists, presumably the man placing the call. A moment later, Mister Percival’s face appeared on the right side of the screen.
“Look familiar?” Vladimir asked.
“Mister Percival,” Nathan realized. “Then he was awake when they arrived.”
“But if you listen, they are not referring to him as Mister Percival.”
Nathan listened as Vladimir turned up the volume and restarted the comm-log entry. Nathan’s expression changed when he heard the colonist address the other man by his real name. “Captain Dubnyk?” Nathan said. “Percival is really Dubnyk?”
“Or Dubnyk was really Percival,” Vladimir said. “We really have no way of knowing at this point.”
“Who knows about this?”
“Other than you and I, only Mister Percival, or Captain Dubnyk, whoever he really is.”
“What about Jessica?”
“I haven’t told her yet.”
“I’ll tell her,” Nathan said, “and Cameron as well. But nobody else, not just yet. I need to think this through.”
“As you wish,” Vladimir promised.
“Nice work, by the way.”
“Of course,” Vladimir smiled.
* * *
“Mister Sheehan,” Nathan said as he stepped up to Loki’s bed. “Nice to have you back.”
“Thank you, sir.” Loki’s voice was raspy and weak. His body lay still with his arms at his sides, and he moved his head and mouth no more than was needed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like my body has been turned inside out.”
Nathan’s face cringed. “Doesn’t sound fun.”
“No, sir.” Loki’s head rolled slightly toward his left, his eyes straining to see his friend in the bed next to his. “Is Josh going to be okay?”
“Don’t you worry about Josh, Loki,” Marcus assured him. “He’ll be fine. Nine lives, that one has.”
“Are you feeling up to a few questions?” Nathan asked, trying as best he could not to pressure the young man.
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened?” Nathan asked, choosing to let Loki attempt to tell his story rather than bombarding him with direct questions. If necessary, such questions could come later.
“There was a fifth moon orbiting the fourth planet in 72 Herculis, the inhabited one. We didn’t see it when we were plotting our course before jumping in, and it wasn’t on the charts.” Loki swallowed hard, his mouth dry. “When we were about halfway to the planet, the fifth moon came out from behind. That’s when we saw it. It was small, more like a large asteroid than a moon, kind of irregularly shaped. At first, I thought it might be a captured one, like the Corinairans did—you know—to mine them in orbit. But we couldn’t use active scanners to get a good read on it.”
Nathan could see that Loki’s mouth was dry and asked one of the medical staff to bring water. “Why the burn?” he asked Loki.
“We were going to pass too close to that moon,” Loki answered. “We were afraid she was going to suck us in if we didn’t do a small burn.”
“Cold jets wouldn’t do it?”
“No, sir, not strong enough.” Loki took a few sips of water before continuing. “We tried to keep the burn low and short in the hopes that no one would notice, but as soon as we made the burn, we took fire: four missiles from the fifth moon we were passing by. There was a base of some sort down there. Josh pulled some fancy moves and evaded the missiles, but they launched fighters next, and we had to make a run for it.”
“Why didn’t you just jump?” Marcus asked.
“They’d see us,” Loki answered. “They’d know.”
Nathan nodded, showing Loki that they had made the right decision.
“Josh decided to try to run behind the planet. He figured we could jump away from the dark side. He tried to time it so those fighters would lose their line of sight on us so we could jump. We figured they’d think we went down to the surface. They launched more fighters from that base to try and cut us off coming around, but they didn’t know we were planning to just disappear on them.”
“So why didn’t you?” Nathan asked.
“We were just about to when more fighters came up from the planet surface right in front of us. Josh dove us straight down, nearly burnt us up passing through the atmosphere, but he managed to shave off enough speed so we could maneuver down low. We lost them in the canyons, even took a few out. Then we hit that waterfall…”
“Waterfall?” Marcus wondered.
“Just as we came around a bend in the canyon. It was just there, right in front of us. It was huge, spilling off the canyon wall on the left.”
“Why didn’t you maneuver around it?” Nathan asked.
“No chance. We were already swinging to port as we came around. Josh had no time. He barely managed to force the turbine nozzles to swing down before we went in. If he hadn’t, we’d be at the bottom of that river right now.”
“That kid and his crazy stunts…” Marcus complained.
“No, he did great, really. Two of the turbines got flooded and were quitting on us when we came out. He could barely keep us in the air. Ship wanted to flip over real bad. We needed to set down. Josh fired everything we had—missiles, drones, decoys—all into the valley ahead as a diversion.”
“A diversion?” Nathan wondered.
“A fake crash site. Then he stuffed us into a small cave up high in the canyon wall next to the waterfall.”
“How did he find it so quickly?”
“He saw it on the TFS as we came out of the falls, high on our port side. Problem was, it was kind of small. Couldn’t use our gear.”
“Is that wh
en the canopy was damaged?”
“Probably, but it was cracked when we came out of the falls. The crash landing probably just finished the job.”
“How did you get airborne again?” Marcus wondered.
“Nothing was wrong with the turbines,” Loki explained. “They were just flooded with water. We just cleaned them out best we could, and they fired up.”
“So the fake crash site idea worked?” Nathan asked in disbelief.
“Sort of. I mean, it worked for a while, but they had fighters circling overhead, keeping an eye out. Garrett warned us that it was just a matter of time before they figured it out and started searching for us.”
“Wait a minute,” Nathan interrupted. “Who’s Garrett?”
“Leader of one of the resistance cells on the planet.”
Jessica had been standing back out of the way and listening to Loki’s account of the events, not wanting to intrude. Now, her interest was piqued. “Captain, if I may…”
Nathan stepped aside to allow Jessica closer to Loki.
“Hi, Loki. Tell me about Garrett,” Jessica persuaded.
“Big, scary looking, dirty. Beard, crazy hair and clothing, like he wanted to blend into the forest. They were all like that.”
“What kind of weapons were they using?”
“Projectile, like the ones you used before you ran out of ammunition. Said the Jung could track the energy weapons and locate them. That’s why they didn’t use them.”
“How did they find you?” Jessica asked.
“Said they used that cave as an observation post from time to time. They were going to watch the Jung activity around the crash site from there. They found us there by accident. We almost got into a shootout with them. Josh stared them down, gun to gun, got them to back away. Their leader got Josh to trust him enough to lower his weapon. Good thing, too. They created a diversion in the next valley and got those fighters to leave the area.”
“Why did they agree to help you?” Jessica wondered.
