by G J Ogden
“The engineering teams have been working hard to construct two new ship transceivers, based on the black market unit that is installed on the Contingency One,” said James. “These are now completed and are being loaded into the cargo hold.”
“So, the short-short version, which is seemingly the one you all want to hear,” Sonner added, icily, while looking directly at Taylor, “is that we jump in, land and revive the flight crews, install the black market transceivers into the two transport ships, and then high-tail it back here.”
“Damn, when you say it like that, it sounds easy,” said Taylor. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get to it!”
“I hope it will be that easy, Captain, I really do,” said Sonner, more somberly, “but based on our record so far, I somehow don’t think it will be...”
EIGHT
Casey initiated the countdown for the final blind jump that would take them to the system containing the third Contingency base. Thanks to the unregistered black market ship transceiver, they had successfully slipped through two Way Stations, without either of them contacting the ship to offer so much as a ‘hello’. And, much to everyone’s relief, it seemed that the racketeers were busy operating elsewhere in the galaxy, because at each of the remaining jump points they encountered nothing more hazardous than space dust. The final blind jump was another long one, taking them to the edge of the Cygnet Spur, where it was closest to the Norma Arm. Ordinarily, the task of computing each of these jumps would have taken several hours per jump, but Sonner’s skilled and efficient engineering teams had helpfully upgraded some of the computer systems on the Hedalt Corvette, using spare parts from the Nimrod Fleet. This had helped to significantly speed up the process.
Casey spun around in her seat, purple canvas shoes pointed towards Sonner in the command chair, toes wiggling like flippers. “Jump ready, Commander S,” she said, brightly. “Just say the word.”
“The word is said, Casey” replied Sonner, a little wearily. “Though I’m glad this is the last time I’ll be squashed out of existence, at least for a while.”
Casey threw up a salute, swiveled back to her console to initiate the jump countdown, and then began spinning around in her chair again.
“Jumping in five...
...F o u r
...T h r e e
. . . T w o
. . . O n e
Taylor smiled as Casey’s feet flashed past again and again, like a lighthouse beacon. It was a little ritual that was as much a part of the process of space travel as the computer calculations or the spooling up of the jump engines. And then she was frozen and the space around her and the ship collapsed to nothing as Casey, Taylor and the rest of the crew fell through a hole and into the Fabric, where they existed purely as energy, suspended in time like prehistoric creatures preserved in amber. But while Taylor would usually only experience the presence of the others in a disconnected sense, like feeling the warmth of someone’s breath on your shoulder, this time he saw Satomi Rose. She was in a large room or chamber, surrounded by an array of alien-looking computer systems, consoles and what looked like stasis pods. And she was smiling as if she was expecting him, like a loved one would smile at a partner returning home after a long day at work. He tried to speak to her, but he was powerless to do anything other than observe. But then no sooner had she appeared, she vanished into darkness again, and Taylor’s mind exploded back into real space, back into his chair at the tactical console.
For several seconds he was just in a state of shock, oblivious to Casey calling out that the jump was complete, or James giving an initial ship’s status report. He wasn’t even aware of the melody of bleeps and thrums and beats of the ship’s many systems that constantly filled the bridge. All he could see was Satomi’s face, smiling back at him. Was that really her? He wondered. I was inside the Fabric, but not connected to it, like when I’m asleep. Or was I connected? All he had were questions that lead to other questions, each as unanswerable as the last.
He considered mentioning it to Commander Sonner, but then realized that there was nothing really to tell her, other than ‘I saw Satomi in my mind’, which sounded a little corny and even embarrassing. But it was true that Satomi had been on his mind a lot recently, so perhaps it was normal that she’d occupy his thoughts, inside or outside the Fabric. He put the incident out of his mind for the time being and spun his chair around to catch up on what he’d missed, but the first thing he saw was Sonner bent over with her head in her hands, suffering from the super-luminal version of travel sickness.
“If we ever find an empty simulant body on one of these missions, make sure we take it with us,” Sonner groaned, sitting back again, but holding her stomach, “I’d think I’d happily live inside one of those frames and sacrifice human sensations and physical emotions if it meant not feeling like this.”
“Wait, you actually experience emotions?” said Taylor, grinning, “I thought you were more of a robot than I am.”
Casey giggled, and James kept his eyes on his consoles so that his sister couldn’t see he was also smirking, but Sonner just sighed heavily and looked at Taylor disapprovingly. “You know, when we recover the reserve crew from this base, I won’t actually have need of you anymore,” she said, deadpan and with a completely straight face.
“You’d miss me,” Taylor laughed, “admit it!”
Sonner’s acerbic response was interrupted by the shrill tone of the tactical alarm, which acted like an electric current delivering a sharp shock that brought everyone’s attention into focus. Taylor swung back to face his console and saw that there was a large energy signature close by. In his daze over seeing Satomi and the subsequent banter with Sonner, he’d forgotten to check for threats after exiting the jump, and he cursed himself silently for being so careless.
“We’re not alone, stand by…” he said as he hurried to assimilate the data. The energy signature was a scanning pulse that was probing the system, like submarine sonar mapping the darkness of the deep sea with sound. “Casey, power down the engines, now!” Taylor called out, “Run silent, quickly.” Casey’s hands moved faster than any human eyes could see and the background throb of the Contingency One’s engine core diminished. He then turned to the mission ops console, “James, shut off the main reactor, and run on as little power as possible!” James had already anticipated the order and the light level on the bridge immediately dropped as the ship switched to its smaller backup generators to keep the fundamental life support systems online.
Sonner was already out of her chair and by Taylor’s side, “What is it? A ship?”
“No, not exactly,” said Taylor as he worked his console and then brought up an image of the object on the main viewport. “It’s some kind of space installation, and whatever it is, it’s massive, and it’s probing the surrounding space like a prison searchlight. We jumped in practically on top of it and were almost detected, but Casey killed the power just in time, so I think we’re safe.”
Sonner stepped back and examined the object on the viewport. Taylor hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it was massive, but it wasn’t a single mass like the city-sized Way Stations. Instead, the installation was built up of a sprawling collection of at least a dozen smaller structures, which were connected by an intricate framework of conduits, like a spider’s web in space. But, unlike a spider’s web where the strands become more densely packed towards the center, the middle of the installation was a giant void that appeared to be filled with hundreds of smaller objects. From the current magnification level, Sonner couldn’t make out what they were.
“What the hell is this place?” wondered Sonner. “And what’s in the center?”
Taylor zoomed in to get a clearer view of the installation’s core. With the extra magnification, they could now see that in the very center of the void was an elevated, cube-shaped structure that was connected to the four quadrants of the facility via conduits. But more surprising was what the smaller objects that surrounded the cube on all si
des actually were. “They’re ships,” said Taylor, zooming in even closer, “There must be hundreds of them.”
“They’re all in various stages of disassembly,” said James from the mission ops console, “many of them have been sliced apart, like they’ve been dissected for parts. My guess is that this is some sort of reclamation and recycling facility.”
“It’s a ship’s graveyard,” said Casey, with a melancholy that was the opposite of her usual sunny demeanor. She looked at Taylor and it was as if she’d just seen a cat being run over in the street, “It’s so sad, Captain. No ship should end its days like this, torn apart for scrap and left to rot.”
Taylor nodded. To others, such sentimentality over what was just a bunch of panels, circuits and engines would have seemed ridiculous but, to Casey, space ships were like living, breathing animals. “Let’s just call it a breaking yard for now,” he said. “Graveyard sounds a bit macabre.”
Sonner sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, whatever it is, it wasn’t here three hundred years ago, and now the damn thing is orbiting directly over the part of the planet’s surface we need to get to.”
Taylor shook his head. Sonner had been right when she’d said this mission wouldn’t be as easy as it sounded. “Of all the planets in the galaxy, why’d they have to pick this one?” grumbled Taylor.
“I don’t think it’s just a graveyard,” said James, but then he realized his slip, “sorry, Casey, breaking yard.” Casey tipped her head back and smiled at him to acknowledge the apology. “I think this planet is perhaps a shipyard too. Or at least a manufacturing base of some kind.”
Sonner folded her arms and turned to him, “Why do you say that?”
“There’s evidence of heavy industrial activity and mining on the surface, and from the limited readings we managed to get before we powered down, I’d say the planet is an unusually rich source of rare metals and probably reactor ore too.”
“Great, remind me to thank the genius at Fleet Command who chose probably the most valuable planet in the galaxy as a location for a hidden base,” said Taylor.
Sonner dropped back into the command chair and stared at the installation on the viewport. It was a complication that they could not have foreseen, and one she had no idea how to overcome, “So how do we get past this thing? I’m open to suggestions.”
“How about we slip around the far side of the planet and approach from inside the atmosphere?” Casey offered, “That way, whoever is on that installation is unlikely to spot us.”
“It’s a good idea, Casey,” replied Taylor, “but if the planet is as heavily industrialized as James says it is, we’d have a tough time travelling across half the planet in atmosphere without someone seeing us, even with your piloting skills.”
“Aw, thanks Cap,” said Casey, picking up on the compliment, rather than his dismissal of her plan.
“The bigger problem is that if we power up, there’s a good chance we’ll be detected long before reaching the planet,” said James, “and besides the scanning probe, there’s also a perimeter sensor field enveloping the entire installation, sort of like a security fence, so a direct path is also out of the question.”
“That’s not surprising,” said Taylor, “With all the tech and spare parts on those ships, it would make a really tempting target for racketeers and other pirates.”
“We’re still carrying a lot of momentum,” said Casey, “We could just coast through the perimeter using the energy we already have, and correct our course with thrusters only. Even if the perimeter field detected us, we’d just look like an asteroid or floating debris.”
Taylor looked at the data from his initial tactical scan, and shook his head again. “The perimeter is also protected by some pretty serious-looking turrets,” he said, “again, likely put there to deter racketeers from trying to raid the place. We could try to slip through, but if they spot us then just one hit from those guns would end our day badly.”
Undeterred by a second rebuttal from Taylor, Casey tapped a few controls and then pointed up at the viewport, “See, there’s a ton of scrap and other junk already floating around out there. It looks like they just push their garbage out into space. I could navigate us through the denser patches, and maybe they won’t see us.”
Sonner had her hands clasped together and was resting her chin on them, listening to the various suggestions from the crew. Other than the alternative, which was to leave, she didn’t have any better ideas. Returning to the Contingency base and using their new data to plan an alternative approach was perhaps the most sensible option, but Taylor’s revelations about Provost Adra underlined the importance of moving swiftly. Plus, she was never one to take the sensible option. She glanced over at Taylor, who just returned a little shrug, indicating that he didn’t have any better plans, and decided to give Casey’s idea a chance.
“Okay, Casey, you’re up,” said Sonner, “but if we’re discovered then we’ll need to get out of here with considerable haste...”
“I’m plotting a reciprocal jump now,” said Casey, cheerfully. “We’d need time to power up the engines, but unless they have ships hiding out there amongst the trash, I doubt they’d reach us in time.”
“Damn it, Casey, I hadn’t even considered that there might already be other ships scouting around out here!” complained Taylor.
Casey smiled and swung her seat back to face the front of the bridge, before enabling her pilot’s viewport, “Don’t worry, Cap, I’m sure there aren’t any,” she said, and then added with a wicked slant, “and there are probably no mines, either...”
Taylor shook his head at her and then concentrated on his panel, but all he could now think about was the possibility of them coasting directly into a minefield or being preyed upon by a hidden Hedalt warship, lying in wait, ready to spring an ambush.
NINE
Much to Taylor’s relief, the junk field didn’t contain any mines, nor were there Hedalt warships prowling the nearby space. And, just as importantly, Casey’s plan also seemed to be working. Using the ship’s momentum and the RCS thrusters to adjust their course, she had skillfully weaved the Contingency One through the mass of detritus so that they were now flying alongside the breaking yard and drawing ever closer to their goal of reaching the planet undetected.
They were more than half-way through the junk field when the collision alarm sounded, and a twisted hunk of some long-dead spaceship or space station spiraled towards them.
“Hold on to your pants, people...” said Casey as she pulsed the thruster controls, taking them directly through the center of the doughnut-like chunk of space debris, which was ten times the size of the Contingency One. The alarm grew more urgent as part of the debris passed by within meters of the ship’s hull, and then tailed off and eventually fell silent.
“That was a little too close for comfort, Casey,” said Sonner.
“I agree,” Taylor added, gripping the arms of his chair and leaving little finger-shaped indentations in the metal. “Hell, I was pretty close to needing new pants, never mind holding on to them!”
“Thank you for that charming image, Captain,” said Sonner, sarcastically, though in truth she agreed with him. She looked back out at the millions of tons of space debris still ahead of them and shook her head gently, “This is worse than navigating through that damn asteroid field. At least then we could shoot some of the obstacles in our path.”
“It’s going to get worse, before it gets better, Commander S,” Casey called out, her eyes fully submerged inside the pilot’s viewport. “There’s a ton of junk ahead of us, and I’m not going to be able to avoid it all.”
Taylor’s tactical console bleeped an alert, indicating movement nearby, and he checked it, desperately hoping that their luck wasn’t about to run out. He analyzed the data and saw that the movement wasn’t a Hedalt ship coming for them, but something equally massive moving inside the breaking yard.
“Tell me it’s not bad news...” said Sonner, who had also
heard the alert.
“No, not for us, anyway,” said Taylor. He punched a few controls and the image on the main viewport shifted to show an enormous crane moving along one of the inner conduits and repositioning itself over a ship that was dumped in the central void. On the end of the crane was an array of claws and arms and cutting tools, and Taylor, Sonner and James watched as it began to slice into the hull of the ship and pick it apart, like a vulture eating carrion. Taylor zoomed in further and then almost jumped out of his seat. The ship was a Hedalt Corvette-class cruiser, the same as the Contingency One. “It’s a Corvette!” exclaimed Taylor, “Hey, maybe it’s a Hunter ship?”
“Don’t get any ideas, Captain,” came Sonner’s immediate reply. “Even if it is a Hunter, and there’s nothing to say it is, it’s unlikely there are any simulants still inside. Those would likely have already been...”
Taylor could tell she had talked herself into a corner. She was going to say ‘scrapped’ or ‘reclaimed’ or some other word that hinted at the recyclable nature of the simulant frames that Taylor and Casey inhabited.
“It’s okay, Commander, I know what you mean,” said Taylor, sparing her the awkwardness of having to stumble through the rest of her sentence, “and you’re probably right, they wouldn’t start slicing it up if there were simulants still on-board.”
“Slicing what up?” said Casey. Her head was still pressed inside the viewport, hands and feet working furiously to navigate the Contingency One through the increasingly dense junk field. She hadn’t see the grisly scene on the viewport.
