Unite the Frontier (United Star Systems Book 3)

by J Malcolm Patrick

  A slaver moved from cover to flank. Lee rolled to the side and shot him through the chest. The slaver’s chest exploded in a puff of red mist. The others backed away.

  Lee opened a comm to Flaps.

  “Flaps, I hope you’re in position!”

  “I damn well am, Lee!”

  Lee sighed. Flaps and his new found colorful metaphors.

  Lee triggered an override from his handheld to the slaver ship’s cargo bay door. Good thing about being in an intelligence service, they could hack nearly everything. Especially an old, obsolete cargo freighter’s hatches.

  The door rose several inches and jammed. Blast it . . . couldn’t make them work though.

  Next to Lee, the sniveling Imperial laughed. “Now what, my good sir?”

  Lee fixed him with a glare. “I’m here to save you. Whoever you are. They,” he flicked his head toward the slavers, “said you’re an Imperial? I don’t care. But you should know . . . Lord Commander Scipio is a friend of mine, so you’d better do exactly as I say.”

  Lee didn’t know if it was his tone or the mention of the Lord Commander. The fellow turned serious.

  “I will follow your instructions, Lieutenant Lee.”

  “Good, lay flat on your back next to me, same direction.”

  More projectiles hit the barricade.

  “I regret this already, just for the record,” the raggedy fellow said, as he lay flat.

  “No more than me. And for very different reasons I assure you!” Lee threw the holoprojector and adjusted his jump pack. “Hold tight onto me. Like your life depends on it. Which it does.”

  He gripped the fellow with his bionic arm. The hologram powered a lifelike replica of him across the deck. The slavers wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from a real person until they fired at it. Lee clenched his jaw. The slavers targeted the hologram.

  He hated this part.

  He triggered his jump pack, and they skated along the deck, inches below the jammed cargo bay door and out through the force field keeping the deck pressurized.

  Two hundred meters along their line of departure Star Runner’s cargo deck loomed. The ramp was already deployed.

  Star Runner’s cargo bay approached at a ridiculous speed. If the Imperial hit it, Lee’d be carrying the fellow’s remains home in a jar. Lee could use his arm to cushion the impact. Then he’d have to explain to Shepherd how he broke every bone in the Imperial’s body.

  Lee fired his grappler at a cargo container near the cargo ramp. As the force engaged, he held the grappler with his bionic arm and used the retracting mechanism to slow their arrival.

  Soon, the environmental systems kicked in and pressurized the cargo bay and they dropped to the deck.

  Lee removed the breather. “Welcome aboard Star Runner,” he wheezed.

  He shivered from the vacuum. Twenty seconds of exposure. They needed the meds fast. Flaps would bring them soon, hopefully. He didn’t have any strength to move.

  The fellow sat up and twisted. Like a sudden realization had dawned on him.

  “Now I remember you,” he said. “The troublesome one from Rigel.”

  The Imperial slumped and passed out on the deck. Lee closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

  Who was this fellow, really?

  Chapter 9- Weapons of Mass Annihilation

  “Commander, the sensors just recorded . . . something” – Lieutenant Useless

  United Fleet Covert Operations Corvette—Exeter

  Deep within Imperial borders

  Exeter fired a final five-second burn from her retro-thrusters and slipped into orbit around the three-hundred mile long asteroid. The grey rock dwarfed the tiny corvette. Commander Avery ‘Vee’ Alvarez had the sensors mapping the massive rock. A maze of hollowed caverns ran through it, large enough for a ship Exeter’s size to wade through if needed. The tunnels were the result of years of mining. He’d never flown inside an asteroid. Might be interesting.

  Avery kept an eye on the sensor board. He didn’t want to miss it.

  Exeter had been operating deep inside Imperial space the past ten days. When Supreme Commander Shepherd had briefed Lee and him, he’d told them the missions he was sending them on were of grave importance to the survival of the United Star Systems. Both Lee and Avery agreed—if Shepherd had dispatched them to catalogue gaseous anomalies, it would have been of grave importance to the said survival.

  Avery’s former captain, Commander Aaron Rayne was overseeing Phoenix’s final repairs. Aaron’s XO Lieutenant Commander Alana Ayres, was looking after Endeavor, a ship rumor held she was being considered to command. Both ships had sustained heavy damage during the mission beyond the wormhole and were in space dock. While the automated repair systems and mk-82 repair drones had done an admirable job before they even returned to USSF Headquarters orbiting Earth, it was still a sound decision to have them looked over in the shipyards. As for Lieutenant Lee, he was off somewhere with Ensign Miroslav, and Avery was here in Imperial space with Lieutenant Marla O’Brian.

  Exeter was the latest ship equipped with the dark-matter reactor and naturally had all of Phoenix’s capabilities. From bow to stern, she only measured 120 meters and lacked the raw firepower possessed by Phoenix. She carried an initial eighty havoc missiles and ten reloads for the railgun magazines.

  Like any other military starship, she had a manufacturing deck to convert raw materials to more munitions for the railguns, more spare parts or other equipment a starship might require on an extended deployment. But what Exeter lacked in firepower, she made up for in acceleration and maneuverability. Her comparatively less mass meant the powerful triple redundant interlocking combat thrusters were capable of accelerating, decelerating, turning, rolling and pitching the ship at far greater degrees per second than Phoenix or Endeavor could. A squadron of these ships would be deadly in the right hands.

  It really was too bad the exotic matter required to build the dark-matter reactor was limited. Although . . . it did mean that they commanded the most powerful ships in the quadrant. Avery was quite content to serve on such a ship, but command was something he never wanted. He’d liked being the bridge between a starship’s captain and its crew. He was good at it. He felt largely responsible for the development of the crew while aboard Trident—before it was destroyed near the Border Worlds. Although his role was diminished now—so to speak—with a smaller crew, it still didn’t make him wish for a different capacity.

  A tapping noise interrupted his thoughts.

  To his left, O’Brian tapped her forefinger excessively on her chair arm. Avery delighted in the realization he was coming to know her nuances. Something troubled her.

  “What is it, XO?”

  She kept her voice low. “This is my second mission assigned to covert operations. While the first was vague, this is yet more frustrating. How can the Supreme Commander expect us to prowl around Imperial space indefinitely, simply saying, when it happens, you’ll know it? We might not be any closer now to this secret weapons research facility he alluded to than the last ten days we’ve been searching, or we might even have passed it several times and not know.”

  Avery regarded her. He understood her frustration. It was ultimately vague. One of twenty possible systems, forty light-years in radius Shepherd had given them. Searching for anything in a vast area of space unless it moved at speeds beyond light would be useless. If they were searching for a ship at warp, the sensors could at least pick up the gravity waves propelled ahead of it.

  “He did say if our search turned up nothing after two weeks, at our discretion, we should begin our extraction from Imperial space.”

  Before the XO could reply the ops officer cut in.

  “Commander, the sensors just recorded . . . something,” he said.

  Avery wasn’t amused. “You have to do better than that, Ops.”

  “I don’t know, sir, these readings . . . I’ve never seen anything like them. The computer isn’t helping.”

  Ave
ry moved over to the ops station. O’Brian almost bumped him from behind.

  “It’s like a ghost reading, or an echo. That’s the best I can describe it, sir.”

  Avery’s eyes narrowed. Not readings he’d ever seen either. And an echo was the best way to describe it.

  “It’s like an instantaneous burst of energy. Originating twenty light-years along the vector towards…” O’Brian traced the trajectory. “Towards Draconis, sir. An uninhabited Imperial system.”

  “Twenty light-years,” Avery repeated to himself. “Even our quantum interferometers would take a few hours to pick up readings that far. Yet, these are appearing to hit our sensors and not hit them at the same time. As though they are here but not here.”

  “It’s confusing, sir,” O’Brian agreed. “Yet it makes sense. It’s like Exeter is at Draconis, yet we’re twenty light-years away.”

  “What do we know about Draconis?”

  O’Brian was already accessing the information. She’d moved back to her command seat and called it up on her board.

  “Nothing special. One main star. Charted 2261 by Imperial survey vessel Aurelius. Roughly half the size of Sol. Draconis-1 is an airless rock. Draconis-2, the habitable planet, is twice as close to their main star as Earth to the sun, but with its main star half the size our sun, it’s in the habitable zone for the system.”

  “Yet, as far as we know, the Empire hasn’t settled Draconis-2.”

  “Not unless they settled it in the past ten days,” she said.

  Just as he became familiar with her nuances, he realized she must be learning his. She moved to stand next to him. She knew he didn’t want the crew overhearing them.

  “I know that look, Avery. What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking subspace echoes, Marla.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Subspace echoes?”

  “That’s why we can detect them this far. The telemetry is traveling through subspace. Much more compact than real space. And at great speeds. It’s like a simple hop as far as subspace theory is concerned.”

  “What could they be doing that’s creating subspace echoes?”

  “The SC said we’d know it when we see it.”

  “Does this prove the presence of a weapons research facility?” O’Brian asked.

  “It proves something is in the Draconis system creating subspace echoes. What that is, we’d have to get closer to find out,” Avery said.

  “What other unknown technologies might the Imperials is developing out here?”

  Avery was thoughtful. “Subspace transition drives? Subspace sensors?”

  “We could be wading into the unknown,” O’Brian said. “It’s possible they have something which has detected us, and we don’t know.”

  Avery agreed. “XO, we’re leaving. Shepherd’s orders were—observe and report. We’ve observed . . . now we must report. We can’t send a transmission powerful enough to reach Sol from this deep within Imperial territory without them knowing we were here.”

  Something nagged at the back of his mind. Subspace echoes, he repeated it to himself again. A captain should always acknowledge his sixth sense. If something didn’t feel right . . . chances are—it was very wrong.

  “General quarters. Helm, prepare to micro jump to system’s edge. Stand by weapons.”

  He took his command chair and Marla leaned over. “Avery?”

  “It’s the subspace echoes, Marla. Somehow, I’m certain the Imperials know we’re here. I don’t know if it began with the echoes or before. I’m betting subspace sensors for sure. Theoretically, they’d have an astronomically powerful detection capability.”

  “They can’t catch, Exeter,” she said, sounding confident.

  “They don’t have to,” Avery said. “They only need one solid visual on us. What will happen to the pending peace treaty if we’re discovered inside Imperial space?”

  “What about the implications of their research into outlawed subspace weapons?”

  “We’ve outlawed it. Not the Empire. The treaty is supposed to address it conclusively—it’s one of the last contentious points.”

  “Commander,” ops called. “Three Imperial Hemiolia-class destroyers just transitioned at system’s edge, bearing three-two-one mark six-one above us on the ecliptic plane.”

  “They know something’s here, but they don’t know what.”

  Exeter could detect the class of Imperial ship which transitioned due to its warp signature. It lit up like a beacon for all to see. In contrast, Exeter was stealthed and running silent. The Imperials were merely aware something was out there. They had to confirm it.

  “Why didn’t we detect these ships warping to this system?” O’Brian asked. “Not a single ping on the gravity waves.”

  “Perhaps those ships are using a form of subspace transition drive, XO,” ops said.

  Avery agreed. “If they can warp in subspace, it’ll hide them from ordinary sensors. The only disadvantage is they cannot warp at high multiples of c. A disadvantage negated by the fact that subspace is so compressed, they don’t have as far ‘relatively’ to travel. It almost works out the same, but it could hide them from our sensors while they’re at warp. Our understanding of subspace mechanics is limited since we’ve banned all subspace research.”

  “That single fact is the direst thing we’ve learned,” O’Brian said.

  Avery couldn’t disagree with her. “Ops,” he called. “Have you found us a suitable cavern?”

  “Aye I have, sir. The probes finished mapping them several minutes ago. The asteroid is mostly hollowed out beyond the cavern’s many tunnels. Must have been mined long ago.”

  “Prepare a stealth probe. Drop it before we enter the cavern. We need to see what’s happening out here, while we’re inside the asteroid.”

  The probe should be undetectable using passive scanners only. It had a small profile and an insignificant power output.

  Six minutes later the ops officer reported. “Probe deployed. Receiving telemetry.”

  Avery nodded. “Take us in nice and easy, minimal burn on the thrusters. Don’t use anything facing the Imperial vessels. Nudge us around dorsal, ventral, port and starboard.”

  Any thruster fired facing the Imperial ship would eventually be picked up on its thermal sensors.

  “How long do we stay here?” O’Brian asked.

  “Until the Imperials get bored, or satisfy themselves they didn’t really pick up anything, and instead had a sensor malfunction.”

  “Suppose they don’t leave for weeks?”

  “We’ll think of something,” Avery said.

  If the Imperials homed in on the asteroid as the focal point for their detection, he’d have to devise a way to leave. The risk of discovery paled to the risk of losing the ship. The decision came down to which was more crucial, the Empire knowing they were here, or Shepherd knowing what they’d discovered?

  It wasn’t a choice at all.

  ***

  Two hours later, the Imperial vessels continued their approach to the asteroid.

  “Commander, they’re slowing,” ops reported.

  “They can’t know we’re in here,” O’Brian said.

  “But they might surmise we’re nearby.” Avery said.

  “They’ve powered down their engines,” ops reported.

  What were the Imperials doing?

  “Small energy buildup on the lead vessel’s bow,” the tactical officer paused. “They’re firing!”

  Before Avery could react, the tactical officer cut in again.

  “It’s a single torpedo, sir,” he sounded almost relieved.

  “Torpedo will impact the asteroid in two minutes,” ops reported.

  “A single torpedo won’t destroy this asteroid,” O’Brian said. “It won’t even shake it.”

  “They might be hoping it’ll flush us,” Avery said.

  The torpedo tracked towards them. The Imperial vessels didn’t fire any more.

  The Imperial Navy doesn’t
use torpedoes.

  “XO?” Avery queried.

  She had the same opinion. “I never knew the Imperials to use torpedoes, sir.”

  “I’ve never seen it either.” Avery turned back to the tactical display. “And only one?”

  “What if it’s not meant for us or has nothing to do with us?”

  They all turned to stare at the lieutenant at tactical.

  “Elaborate, Lieutenant,” Avery ordered.

  “Suppose it’s just another test and coincidentally in this system?”

  O’Brian didn’t seem convinced “But the subspace echoes…” she said.

  Avery nodded. “We can’t know for sure, they might know we’re here, or they might suspect and need confirmation.”

  “One minute until Impact,” tactical reported.

  A good captain had only his instincts. Everything about this situation told him something was very wrong. He made his decision.

  “We’re leaving. Navigate us through the caverns with haste. Bring us along the caverns leading to the exit on the other side.”

  “Aye, Commander. Maneuvering thrusters.”

  Good thing this wasn’t Phoenix. She’d never fit in these caverns.

  “The torpedo has detonated, Commander.”

  Avery looked at his board. Sure enough it detonated thirty seconds from impact. Something much worse came their way.

  “The exit is just up ahead.”

  “Massive energy wave emanating from the focal point of the torpedo detonation. It’s expanding exponentially. It’s created a rupture in space!” ops reported.

  The energy ribbon expanded on a horizontal and vertical plane. By the time it reached the asteroid it would be large enough to engulf it.

  “The exit!” someone shouted.

  Avery looked checked his readings. It was smaller than Exeter.

  “Tactical, forward guns, target the mouth of the exit. Widen it for us.”

  The recessed dorsal, ventral and forward railguns extended from the hull and volleyed at the looming exit. Chipping away and widening it.