by Brown, Ryk
They were forced to use the maneuvering jets built-into their suits, as there was little to grab onto and the deck didn’t seem to have enough metal in it to use the magnets built into their boots. Jessica tried to use her hands when she could, hoping to save as much of her limited suit thrusters as possible in case she needed them later.
Luckily it had not been far from their entry point to the engineering section of the smaller ship, and a few minutes later they reached the access hatch to engineering.
“We’re taking fire!” came a voice over her comm-set. “Repeat, Alpha team is taking fire!”
Jessica looked to her team leader for orders.
“You know the rules, Nash,” he warned. “They have their job, we have ours.”
She watched as her partner placed the demo charges on the hatch, taking a safe position just around the corner. After he finished placing the charges, he moved around the corner with her before reporting.
“Charges are set LT.”
“Blow it.”
“Fire in the hole,” he announced.
There was a flash of light, but no sound since they were in a vacuum. Hundreds of pieces of metal shrapnel flew past them. After waiting a moment, Enrique peaked his head around the corner to take a look. The corridor was full of smoke, but there was light shining through the smoke which he was sure was coming from the open hatchway into Engineering.
“We’ve got a hole,” Enrique reported.
The team leader and his partner took up positions on either side of the door. They each had to keep one hand on the hatch ring in order to keep from floating freely in the zero gravity of the hallway.
The lieutenant took a small marker stick from his utility pouch and tossed it through the hatch. As it floated across the threshold, it suddenly dropped to the floor.
“There’s gravity in there,” he reported. He pulled out his fiber optic camera and carefully snaked the lens around the edge of the hatch to look inside. On the far side of the room, he could see a man in a pressure suit, frantically doing something at a control console. He couldn’t see a weapon on him.
“I’ve got one bad guy, in a pressure suit, doing something at a console on the left. I can’t tell if he’s armed.”
Suddenly, his partner stuck his weapon through the hatchway and opened fire. Immediately, two blue-white blasts of energy were fired at the hatch from inside. The first one bounced off the wall inside, but the second one came through the hatch, catching the over enthusiastic ensign in the shoulder, instantly burning a hole through his armor, suit, and shoulder. He screamed in pain as the upper half of his suit suddenly depressurized, killing him a moment later.
“Shit!” the lieutenant screamed. “Mendez! Nash! Get ready! I’m tossin’ flash-bangs in five!
Jessica and Enrique took up positions across the corridor from the hatch, ready to push against the opposite wall to propel themselves through the hatchway and into the room. A moment later, the lieutenant tossed a flash-bang grenade into the defended compartment. The grenade flashed silently on the other side of the wall, lighting up the corridor for a brief moment. Enrique launched himself off the wall, flying across the weightless hallway and into the next room. As he flew across the threshold, the artificial gravity in the compartment pulled him down harder than expected, knocking his weapon from his hand.
More blasts of blue-white light sprayed across the room, one grazing his left thigh.
Jessica had launched herself only a moment later, flying deeper into the compartment and landing just past Enrique, spraying fire in the direction of the enemy. The lieutenant jumped through the hatchway next, landing on his feet and scurrying along the wall toward the now silent enemy. He moved swiftly around the console and found the enemy lying on the floor, bullet wounds riddling his torso and face.
“Clear!” the lieutenant announced.
Jessica scrambled back to Enrique, quickly pulling out an emergency wound dressing.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, dropping your weapon like that!” she scolded. “You weren’t supposed to get shot, dumbass!”
“Sorry, Jess,” he apologized, wincing through the pain. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t,” she corrected, as she applied the bandage. “I just don’t wanna have to break in a new dumbass,” she added with a grin.
“How is he?” the lieutenant inquired from behind the console.
“He’ll live!” Jessica responded. “Lucky for you these suits are compartmentalized. Otherwise you would’ve decompressed and you’d be dead by now.”
She quickly wrapped over the top of the bandage with a sealing wrap, and then pressed some buttons on his wrist mounted suit control to re-pressurize the damaged section of his suit. “You lost a lot of your air through that hole. You’d better head back now.”
Jessica helped Enrique to his feet and got him through the hatchway back into the corridor where he could float in zero-gravity. “Use your suit jets and haul ass back to the ship!” She gave him a shove down the corridor to get him on his way. A second later his maneuvering jets fired and he picked up speed and finally disappeared around the corner.
Jessica leaned back into the engineering compartment and made her way over to the lieutenant. He was pushing buttons and looking at displays, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Shit! This is all in Jung!,” he complained, obviously frustrated. “Do you read Jung?”
“Nobody reads Jung, LT!” she defended. “Hell, I didn’t even know they had their own language!”
There were several indicators on a section of the console that looked like it controlled the antimatter reactor. They were blinking red and their indicators were rising.
“I don’t like this,” Jessica grumbled. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Captain, I’m not picking up any bio-signals from Alpha team,” the XO reported, “and there’s no more comm-chatter.”
“Aurora, Bravo Leader! We’ve got a problem!”
“Go ahead, Bravo,” the commander answered. As the acting tactical officer, it was his job to manage the boarding action.
“Aurora, it looks like they’ve initiated an overload of their antimatter reactor! I’m not sure! It’s all in Jung! But I’m pretty sure it’s gonna blow in 5 minutes!”
“Pull them out, now!” the captain ordered.
“Bravo, fall back! Repeat! Fall back! Return to the ship!”
“Copy that!”
“How long will it take us to get to minimum safe distance at full thrust?” the captain demanded.
Cameron punched in a string of calculations at lightning speed. “Estimate eight minutes, sir.”
“What are you doing?” Jessica said. “You heard him, we’ve gotta go!”
“I think I can buy you some time!” the lieutenant explained. “When I press this button, it makes the temp on the reactor drop a few degrees! It won’t stop it, but I might be able to buy the Aurora a few more minutes to get clear.”
“Are you crazy? You’ll be vaporized!”
“At least I won’t feel anything,” he joked.
She looked at him through his visor, the fear evident on his face as he repeatedly pressed the button in a losing battle to delay the inevitable.
“Move it, Ensign!” he ordered.
“LT!”
“Look, it may not be enough even if I do stay!” He looked at her sternly. “Go Jess, please?” he begged.
She took a hesitant step backwards, paused, and snapped a salute before turning and running, diving head first through hatchway and into the weightless corridor where her momentum carried her rapidly down the hall.
“How much longer until we can get outta here?” the captain asked.
“Two of them are on the transfer line now,” the commander answered. “But one of them is still in the engineering compartment.
“What the hell? Get him out of there!”
“Bravo Leader! You’ve got o
ne still on board! Sit Rep!” the commander ordered. A moment passed before the XO repeated the hail. “Bravo Leader, Aurora! Do you copy!”
“Aurora! Ensign Nash! The lieutenant has probably switched off his comm-set!”
Nathan turned his head suddenly, realizing that it was Jessica out there. It wasn’t that he had any particular emotional attachment to her, at least not the he was consciously aware of. But he actually knew someone who was out there, putting their life on the line right now, and that sensation was new to him.
“Nash, Aurora! Explain!” the commander ordered
“He stayed behind! He’s manually stalling the overload! He’s trying to buy us a few more minutes! He probably went dark so we couldn’t talk him out of it!”
Commander Montero looked at the captain, who had a blank look in his eyes. This new crew might be fresh out of the academy and inexperienced, but they were not lacking in courage.
“Understood,” the commander transmitted solemnly. “ETA to Aurora?”
“Two minutes, Sir!”
“Copy.”
Jessica continued pulling herself along the cable, hand over hand, as she made her way back to the ship. She was nearly halfway there when she looked up and saw Enrique settling in on the Aurora’s landing apron next to the base of the transfer line.
“Shake a leg, Jess!” he called over the comm-set. “We ain’t got all day, you know!”
“Quit your bitchin’ I’m coming!”
Suddenly, Enrique’s eye widened as he noticed movement on the surface of the Jung ship.
“Jess! One of the turrets!”
“Captain!” the sensor officer called out. “The Jung ship, Sir! She’s got one of her gun turrets back online!”
“What? I thought she had no power?” the captain barked.
“I don’t know how sir, but she’s got a turret swinging over to take aim at the landing apron,” the sensor officer explained urgently. “More turrets coming online as well! Two, Three, Four…, they’re all coming to life!”
Rail gun rounds flew all around Jessica as she rapidly ascended the transfer line, pulling herself towards the ship as fast as her hands could move. Out of the corner of her visor she could see multiple flashes as more of the Jung cannons began to open fire on the Aurora, sending chunks of the hull flying in all directions.
“Oh shit!” she exclaimed.
A split second later, the Aurora’s cannons opened up on the Jung ship. Enrique watched in awe as the upper hull of the Jung ship was torn apart by the Aurora’s rail gun fire.
“Detach the line!” she called out to Enrique. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”
Without hesitation, Enrique did as his partner asked. He reached down to the base of the transfer line where it connected to the deck. Opening up a small panel in the side of the connection collar, he pushed the button in and held it down.
At the far end of the cable, where it connected to the Jung ship, the line released its connection and began to float away freely.
“Transfer line disconnected!” he announced.
“Aurora, Nash! The line is free! Get us outta here!”
“Nash! Aurora! Are you secure!”
“I’m secure, damn it! Now go!”
“Aurora, Mendez! She’s still on the line, about fifty meters away!”
“Goddamn it! Just go!” she demanded. “I’ll make it!”
“Take us out,” the captain ordered. “But not too fast yet, we don’t want her slamming against the hull.”
Nathan started with the docking thrusters only, burning them for a few seconds as he tried to imagine Jessica, out there in the vacuum of space as she clung onto the transfer line while it swung her down toward the hull of the ship. He knew that no matter how slow he went, she was still going to hit hard.
“Commander!” Nathan yelled, suddenly having an idea. “Tell her to call out just before she impacts the hull! A couple meters, maybe!”
The commander didn’t bother to ask Nathan why, figuring it wouldn’t hurt.
“Good thinking, Nathan,” the captain said. He already knew what his helmsman was up to.
“Nash, Aurora! Call out a few meters before you hit the hull!”
Out on the landing apron, Enrique was protected against the motion of the ship by her inertial dampeners. But out on the end of the transfer line, Jessica was not. And it was all she could do to just hang on. With her legs wrapped tightly around the line to help keep her from sliding farther down it, there was no way she would be able to continue her ascent until after she hit the hull. That is, if she survived the impact.
As she dangled around on the line, spinning back and forth, she could see the impacts of the Jung rail gun fire on the hull of the ship. It was an ugly thing to witness, but the damage didn’t appear too serious. She was sure that the Jung were firing blindly out of desperation and not really aiming strategically.
As the Aurora continued to accelerate, she could tell that she was getting closer to the hull as her body weight on the line resulted in a lazy arc towards the ship. By her best guess, she was going to hit about fifty meters aft of the landing apron. But the apron itself was at least ten meters higher than the hull behind her, and it was an overhang to which there was no way up. Even if she did survive the impact, how was she going to get back into the ship? Even with the inertial dampeners, she doubted she could climb around on the outside of the ship during full acceleration.
As she spun around again, she was able to see something near the spot she thought she was going to land. Something round. A hatch!
“Aurora, Nash! Is that a hatch I see just aft of the landing apron?”
“Affirmative! We’re on it!”
Within seconds, the spec ops master chief was running through the corridors of the Aurora, on his way to the airlock just aft of the landing apron.
“Time to overload?” the captain asked.
“Unknown,” the commander said. “Based on the lieutenant’s original report, it should’ve already happened.”
“I guess whatever he’s doing is working,”
“Captain, we’re starting to show them our hind quarters. Without shields, if we take too many hits on the stern we might lose main propulsion,” the commander warned.
“Helm come slowly to starboard, try not to show them our ass too much.”
“Yes Sir.”
The ship started to roll to starboard slightly, as she started a slow right turn. Jessica’s descent arc started to slide to port slightly, which by her estimates would make her land even closer to the airlock hatch. Damn, Nathan. I underestimated you.
Inside the ship, the spec ops master chief arrived at the airlock and began depressurizing the chamber.
“Three meters!” Jessica called out over comms.
Without being ordered, Nathan pitched the tail of the ship down slightly to reduce Jessica’s rate of closure thereby lessening her impact velocity. It wasn’t much, but he desperately hoped it would help.
Jessica’s eyes widened as she rapidly fell towards the ship. But then, suddenly, her rate of closure changed, slowing considerably. She realized the ship was pitching her tail down, and she knew that Nathan was trying as best he could to give her a soft landing.
But it could’ve been softer, for she hit hard, knocking the air out of her lungs. She rebounded from the deck, floating back up slightly, but the ships acceleration forced her back down, striking a second time. As she rolled over onto her side, the hatch, located not more than a meter away, suddenly opened. I may have to give you another quickie, Nathan, she thought, as she struggled to get through the airlock hatch.
“Bridge! Airlock fourteen! Nash is in!”
“All ahead full!” the captain ordered.
Nathan immediately brought the mains up to full power, feeling the acceleration as it pushed him back into his chair. Those dampeners are pretty damned good, he thought.
“How long until we get clear?” the captain asked again.
“Fiv
e minutes, Sir,” Cameron responded.
Nathan wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a touch of fear in her voice. Perhaps she’s human after all?
The rail gun fire continued to rock the ship, diminishing as their distance from the enemy increased. The captain’s mind was racing furiously, searching for options. If he put a torpedo into her, it might stop the overload. But it might also kill the brave lieutenant that was sacrificing himself to buy them some time. And it also might trigger the overload even sooner. If he had his FTL fields, he could probably accelerate past light speed and get clear, but all the emitters were being used by the special projects team. That’s when the idea struck him.
“Doctor Karlsen!” the captain said, spinning around. “Can we make another jump?”
“You cannot simply snap your fingers and jump as you say,” he argued. “It takes time to recharge the energy banks…”
“…How much time?”
“At least one hour for every light year traveled,” the Doctor explained. “But there are other considerations…”
“There is enough energy currently in the banks for a transition back to Earth, Captain,” Doctor Sorenson interrupted. Public speaking was not her father’s strength, nor was seeing the big picture quickly. For all his brilliance in physics, he tended to have tunnel vision in such matters. “But it takes time to calculate a transition sequence…”
“…How long?”
“Too long, I’m afraid,” she admitted.
“What about Earth? Didn’t you already have a sequence programmed to return to Earth?”
