by Ryk Brown
“Still, it’s a good idea to adapt one of our data pads to do the same thing.” Nathan sat down in his command chair and turned his attention forward. “Mister Riley, what do you have for us?”
“Beta Virginis to Wolf 1481 to Sol,” Mister Riley reported, “That will put us at the requested point in the Sol system. Our course at arrival will not be directly at the Earth, but a small course correction would put us on an intercept course if desired.”
“Will that give us the viewing angle we’re looking for?” Nathan asked Lieutenant Yosef.
“Close enough that it shouldn’t make a difference,” the lieutenant reported.
“I’ve reviewed Mister Riley’s proposed course,” Cameron said. “At the speed we’ll be traveling on arrival at the recon point, the change in our viewing angle over the course of a full day’s travel will only be a single degree.”
“Any idea if either of those systems is occupied?” Nathan asked.
“According to the survey files in the Data Ark, neither system has any habitable worlds, mostly just gas giants and frozen, rocky worlds,” Cameron said. “Beta Virginis does have a super-Earth, but it’s too far from its parent star to have liquid water. If there are any colonies in either system, they’ll most likely be mining operations of some sort, but I doubt anyone will be out there. There are many more worlds in the core that are far better candidates for such operations.”
“Just as well,” Nathan said. “We don’t need the extra complications right now, unless one of them just happens to have a fuel depot.”
“No one is that lucky,” Cameron said, “not even you.”
“I suppose that would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it? How long will it take us to get there?” Nathan asked.
“If we push the jump drive to her new safe max range of fifteen light years, then limit each jump to fourteen light years to ensure that we have enough power for an emergency escape jump at each arrival point, it should take us around forty-two hours,” Cameron explained. “That includes the time it will take to perform the two gravity assist maneuvers.”
“Better than I thought,” Nathan said. “Maybe we should think about using gravity assistance to make big turns more often.”
“We got lucky this time, sir,” Cameron reminded him. “We’re not always going to find such convenient alignments.”
“Still, until we know we have a reliable source of propellant, we should always look for a gravity assist course whenever possible. Like you said, every drop counts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well done, Mister Riley,” Nathan said. “Execute your first jump when ready.”
“Aye, sir,” Mister Riley answered. “Activating auto-nav. Executing course change for the Beta Virginis system in one minute.”
“You know,” Nathan said to Cameron, “if we are going to fight a long, drawn-out, guerrilla-style campaign, eventually we’re going to need a base of operations.”
“What did you have in mind?” Cameron asked.
“I don’t know, a small moon, an asteroid, maybe even a hospitable world.”
“We’d probably have a hard time finding one in the core that isn’t already taken,” Cameron said. “From what we’ve learned, we may have a hard time finding one within a few hundred light years.”
“Yeah, that would be asking a lot as well, wouldn’t it?” Nathan said.
“I think we’re a long way from needing a base of operations, Captain.”
“Just thinking ahead, Commander.”
Cameron’s eyes narrowed. “Is that why you were hoping to find an industrialized world outside the core on our way home? You wanted a base of operations?”
“Actually, no,” Nathan said, “although it would have been nice. In all honesty, I really did expect to hand the ship back over to Fleet when we got home.”
“The thought that we might be too late never occurred to you?” Cameron asked, a faint hint of disbelief in her voice.
Nathan felt the ship’s maneuvering systems firing to alter her attitude. A few seconds later, the mains fired in order to adjust her heading. The Aurora’s inertial dampening systems still allowed for some sensation of movement while removing enough of the force of acceleration so as not to interfere with the normal operations of her crew. “Perhaps. Maybe I just didn’t want to admit that possibility to myself. Just between us, I wasn’t all that surprised when it did happen, considering how things have gone so far.”
“Yes, we’ve had our share of luck,” Cameron agreed, “both good and bad.”
A minute later, the main engines went quiet.
“Course correction complete,” Mister Riley reported. “We are now on a heading for Beta Virginis.”
“Very well, Mister Riley,” Nathan said. “You’re cleared to jump.”
Nathan was relieved to be jumping away from the Earth, even though his mind was still on the billions of people on their homeworld now living under Jung occupation. He tried to tuck away his concerns about his parents, his brother, his sisters, and all of their children, but they kept creeping back into his thoughts. At least for a time, they were heading away from trouble, even if only temporarily.
As the bridge filled with the blue-white light of the jump flash, he knew the Aurora could be headed directly into another Jung stronghold, but it was a risk they had to take. Every jump was a calculated risk, especially now that they were back in the core and in enemy territory. It seemed strange to him to refer to his own home system as enemy territory, but that was the reality.
* * *
Marcus stood in the Aurora’s port-side aircraft maintenance bay staring at the damaged Falcon, his arms folded across his chest.
“What do you think, Senior Chief?” Vladimir asked as he entered the maintenance bay.
“I don’t rightly know,” Marcus admitted. “That boy has banged up a lot of ships over the years, and I’ve been able to fix them all. But this one? To be honest, I’m not sure which end to start at.”
“It is not that bad,” Vladimir assured him. He looked over the exterior. The Falcon sat on a tow dolly, as her landing gear doors were buckled inward and would not open. The front half of the canopy was completely shattered. There was evidence of unburned fuel on the fuselage near the thrust ducts, which meant problems with the air-breathing turbines. There were also numerous dents, scratches, and even some sections where the hull skin was torn open. “It’s all body work,” Vladimir declared.
Marcus handed him his data pad. “Here’s the internal systems’ diagnostics report.”
Vladimir looked over the list. “That’s only twelve items.”
Marcus reached over and pressed a button on the data pad to go to the next page.
“Okay, twenty-four items,” Vladimir said, as members of his repair detail began to arrive.
“That’s only page two,” Marcus told him, “of eight.”
“Oh Bozhe,” Vladimir mumbled. “How did they get this thing off the ground again?”
“Josh was the pilot, remember?” Marcus said. “The boy don’t know when to keep his feet on the ground.”
Vladimir looked at the interceptor as it sat perched at an unnatural angle on the tow dolly. “You start at one end, and I’ll start at the other,” he joked.
“Get the cables on her and lift her up, boys!” Marcus ordered the work crew. “First thing we gotta do is get some jack stands under her, so we can work on her gear doors.”
“We are going to be here for a long time,” Vladimir said as he rolled up his sleeves and headed for the aft end of the Falcon.
“Yup.”
* * *
“I’ve been thinking,” Cameron said between bites of her salad.
“About?” Nathan asked.
“How we’re going to go about this. Fight
ing the Jung, I mean.”
“And?”
“As long as we don’t take too many hits, we can jump in, strike, and jump out indefinitely. I mean, how do they counter that ability?”
“By being ready to fire in any direction,” Nathan said, “or laying mines all over the place, or using a firing pattern that just sweeps all over the place, kind of like what Tug used to take out that comm-drone.” Nathan took another bite as he thought. “There are There’re a lot of ways to counter our jump drive once they figure out how we’re using it. That advantage will not last long. Once every ship in the Jung fleet knows about us, they’ll be ready.”
“If we had the plasma cannon turret working, we could jump in beside them, take a dozen shots, and jump out again along the same course, all without maneuvering. We’d only be in their sights for a few seconds. Do that a few times from varying angles and ranges, and just about any ship would fall sooner or later.”
“Why couldn’t we just jump with our nose pointed toward where we know the target will be when we come out of the jump?” Nathan said. “The plasma cannon in tube one made short work of them.”
“Can we jump with our nose pointed off our course?” Cameron asked.
Nathan shrugged. “Why not? The way I understand it, our course and speed are the determining factors, that and the amount of power dumped into the jump fields when they cross. I don’t think attitude is part of the equation.”
“I’ll have to check with Abby about that,” Cameron said. “That reminds me; we should probably go ahead and replace all our torpedo tubes with the plasma cannons.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to run out of torpedoes sooner or later,” Cameron explained. “Seems logical to switch them over while we have the time.”
“I’m not so sure,” Nathan argued. “There may be advantages to physical torpedoes over the plasma cannons that we don’t know about. I think I’d prefer to keep at least half our tubes as they were built for now. Besides, we don’t have any evidence yet to suggest that two cannons on each side would be twice as effective as one.” Nathan took another bite of his lunch. “Like I said, let’s not make any mistakes.”
“You can make a mistake by not doing something just as easily, Nathan.”
“Very true. I’m just saying I’d like to analyze the idea a bit more before coming to a decision.”
“Nathan Scott, thinking before acting.” Cameron laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Nathan flashed a sarcastic lopsided smile her way as he finished his lunch and pushed the empty container aside. “Doesn’t matter anyway. With the Falcon and the new jump shuttle project, the fabricators are going to be busy for the next few weeks. We’ll make do with what we have for now. As soon as they get that new inner bulkhead installed in the starboard forward torpedo room, we’ll have two working plasma torpedo cannons pointed forward. That will have to do.”
“Plasma torpedo cannons?” Cameron asked. “I’ve never heard that term before.”
“Makes sense to me,” Nathan said. “They shoot bolts of plasma energy from a cannon that sits in one of our torpedo tubes. Plasma torpedo cannons.”
“Maybe just plasma torpedoes,” Cameron suggested. “That way they won’t be confused with the turret-mounted cannon once we get that up and running.”
“Sounds good.”
“I was also thinking about the missile battery,” Cameron said. “We only have a finite number of missiles as well.”
“You want to replace our missile battery also?”
“The missile battery isn’t the problem. It’s the space that the additional stored missiles take up. If we cut the number of missiles we carried by at least half, we’d gain a lot of deck space above us.”
“What would we do with it?”
“Put in more plasma torpedo cannons? Two facing forward and two to each side maybe? Or a ring of plasma cannon turrets, like the ones on the Avendahl?”
“Where would we put the extra missiles?”
“Store them below in the cargo decks,” Cameron suggested. “The forward elevator pads go from the missile deck to the cargo deck. That’s how they get them from the cargo shuttles on the hangar deck up to the missile deck.”
“That’s moving the missiles a long way from the launcher,” Nathan said. “It would take an hour to get them moved back up and into the loader racks.”
“What’s the most you’ve ever launched in one engagement?”
“I don’t know, twenty maybe? Thirty?”
“Then store twenty-four in the loader racks. That’s six rounds of four. We’re probably looking at quick, hit-and-run engagements now anyway. I doubt we’ll ever use them in such scenarios.”
“You could be right about that,” Nathan admitted. “Run the idea past Lieutenant Montgomery and Vlad. See what they say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’ll be a big project though.”
“Perhaps,” Cameron said as she took the last bite of her salad. “But I suspect we’ll have some of those.”
* * *
“Captain,” Jessica called from the hatch to the captain’s ready room, “do you have a moment?”
“Of course,” Nathan answered, placing his data pad down on his desk. He had been studying the performance parameters and potential firepower reports for the new plasma cannons installed in two of their torpedo tubes as well as the turret-mounted version that they were planning on testing. It was mind-numbing scientific data, and he welcomed a brief interlude. “What can I do for you?”
“I was going through all of the signals we collected during our brief time in Earth’s orbit,” Jessica began as she closed the hatch behind her.
“You collected signals, too?”
“I didn’t tell you?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oops,” she said as she plopped down on the couch in her usual fashion. “Yeah, I asked Naralena’s assistant to monitor any and all signals emanating from Earth.”
“How much did you collect?”
“Only a few minutes’ worth, I’m afraid. But there was a lot of data to be found in those few minutes. For starters, I was right. There is an organized resistance on Earth. There were several reports of attacks against small Jung targets on the surface. Nothing huge, but enough that it is probably pissing them off.”
“What else?”
“There’s chatter about us, about us returning that is. Apparently, they did think we were lost. The official word was that we had crashed into Jupiter. It was quite a shock when we suddenly appeared nearby out of nowhere. From what I can tell, they seem pretty excited.”
“Our people might be, but I’m pretty sure the Jung are not,” Nathan said. “What else?”
“There was a signal beamed directly at us.”
“Beamed?” Nathan wondered. The word implied that the message was targeted in order to avoid just anyone picking it up.
“Laser comm. A portable unit, based on the signal strength. Set to wide beam, probably because we were maneuvering and hard to lock onto.”
“I thought those units were designed to automatically lock onto the laser comm array of a friendly ship,” Nathan said.
“Yeah, but as soon as we went to general quarters, Naralena shut down the locking beacon. Standard procedure. Besides, even with the beacon on, those portable units don’t work as well as they’re supposed to.”
“So the message was targeted at us,” Nathan said. “What was the message, and who was it from?”
“It was an action order, sir,” Jessica said, “sent over Fleet channels using our standard rotating encryption codes. Valid authentication codes as well.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?” Nathan asked, not bothering to conceal the irritation
in his voice.
“The comm-tech didn’t even know it was there, Nathan,” Jessica said. “He’s Corinairan and has never seen a Fleet comm-signal before. Neither has Naralena, for that matter. Also, it took me a while to decode the message. I haven’t done one since the academy, and we don’t have any code guys on board.”
“What did the message say?”
“Recon, one five zero five seven two, which I’m pretty sure is a date, and then a string of numbers I haven’t figured out yet.”
“Let me see them.” Nathan took Jessica’s data pad from her and studied the message. After a minute, he laughed. “Right ascension and declination.”
“What?”
“They’re used to find stars in the sky in astronomy. I had a telescope when I was a kid. I used to spend hours staring at the night sky,” he explained as he punched the numbers into his console. “Strange, but it doesn’t match anything in the astronomy charts. So they’re not asking us to recon a star system.”
“Why the date?” Jessica wondered. “Is that when they want the recon performed?”
“I don’t think so,” Nathan said. “This date is two months ago.”
“Wait a minute. Do you think that date is when the Jung attacked Earth?”
“Holy crap, you’re right. They’re giving us a viewing angle and the distance from the recon target,” Nathan said.
She frowned. “I thought you said the numbers didn’t point to any known star?”
“No, they don’t. The angle leads back to Earth from a point along the angle two light months away from her. Earth is the recon target. They want us to see what happened.”
“Why give us an angle to look from?” Jessica asked.
“Because they want us to see something,” Nathan surmised, “something special.”
