by Richard Fox
“Project Diamond?” Nunez asked.
Schneider nodded. “That’s right. And I don’t think I have to tell you the hazards of sorting out the non-linear architecture of alien neural connections and synapse mapping. Geez, what a hassle.”
Nunez gave the scientist a blank stare. “Yeah.”
Moretti suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “So, no luck in extracting any useable data?”
“Actually,” Schneider said, motioning them over to one of the holo-displays. Glowing orange and blue fractals scrolled across the rectangular display as lines of white text scrolled through several boxes along the side. “We were able to use one of the logic cluster emulators, brought back from Negev to filter out some of the erroneous code and thanks to the notes from Jared Hale’s personal computer; we were able to crack the first layer of digital encryption.”
“So you are making progress.”
“A little. Like I was saying, we are extremely close to accessing the specimen’s neural network. After that, we should have all the data we need and more.”
“Doc, what’s this freak show even for?” Nunez asked.
“The Ultari went aboard that ship specifically for this.” Moretti tapped on the glass. “They didn’t take a head from the other, less augmented Ultari. There’s too much data in there, accessible data, that they wanted it just for a trophy.”
“We cross the void between galaxies and meet alien head hunters,” Nunez said. “I knew I should’ve put in for an archaeotech hunting team instead of Terra Nova. My fault for believing the recruiter!”
Chapter 8
Greer checked Valiant’s displays for the fifth time, taking a long breath as her gaze passed over the readouts in front of her. They all read green, everything in functional or optimal range. And that both excited and terrified her.
“Looks like everything’s good to go,” Lincoln said, leaning back in his seat to her right.
“Yeah,” Greer said.
Her co-pilot shot her a worried look. “You okay, Rachel? Not having second thoughts, are you?”
“No…” She paused, trying to think of the right words. “It’s just the whole ideal of it is… a bit much to take in.”
“Greer, come on, we’re about to be the first two human beings to go faster than the speed of light. We’ll be like the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Yuri Gagarin in space. Fredrickson in the first Alcubierre drive that made the Mars run in less than a week.”
“You left out Harrison and the Alcubierre drive that exploded before Fredrickson made his run.”
“Happy thoughts.”
They’d just passed Terra Nova’s second moon, heading out system, to the area mapped out by the techs and scientists back on the planet as the least likely to cause negative effects on their jump. They’d told her everything was working properly, and there wouldn’t be any issues at all, but they weren’t out here, were they? They were still back in their comfortable, air-conditioned, laboratory, waiting to see the results of their two-week, round-the-clock refit of Valiant’s main drive system.
She’d sat in on a number of their computer simulations and knew they’d had at least 100 successful test runs, but theoretical test runs were completely different than actually doing something.
The ship’s IR buzzed and Commander Edison’s voice came through the cockpit speakers. “Terra Nova Control to Valiant, sensors indicate you are entering Test Grid 1A, how are you looking up there, Lieutenant Greer?”
Greer shook herself. “Everything is green across the board, Terra Nova. We are good to go up here.”
“Roger that, Valiant,” Edison said. “Give us another minute for last-minute pre-flight and drive check.”
“Copy that.” Greer muted the IR and gave Lincoln a sidelong look. “If we blow up, I’ll get the first round in heaven.”
Lincoln snorted. “Oh yeah, so what, does that mean I have to buy the beer if we don’t blow up? That doesn’t seem like a fair bet. What if they don’t serve beer in the afterlife?”
“Beer is the nectar of the Gods, Lincoln. Of course they’re going to serve it in the afterlife.”
“I still say it’s a sucker’s bet.”
Greer leaned over and held out her hand.
“Ugh, fine.” Lincoln gave her hand a good squeeze and smiled. “Worst that can happen is I’m out a couple of credits, right?”
“See, happy thoughts.”
Edison’s voice came back over the IR. “Okay, Valiant, connection status and computer link-up confirmed. All systems within safe parameters. You are clear for FTL drive activation.”
“Roger, that, Terra Nova Control, go for FTL.”
Greer’s finger hovered over the screen, centimeters from the drive control. She gave Lincoln one last look and he nodded. She let out a long breath and said, “One small step…”
A high-pitched thrumming reverberated through the hull as the drives spun up. System messages flashed across her displays and the cabin’s interior lights dimmed. A countdown on the main screen ticked off five seconds. The low tone rumbled inside Greer’s chest and the stars outside her cockpit began to move.
She sat, mouth open, but not speaking, as the stars began to stretch away, forming a pointing somewhere in the infinite space ahead of her. Lights flashed, and she felt her skin begin to tingle. A second later, there was a flash of brilliant light and the stars vanished, replaced by several moments of swirling blue and white lines.
Greer brought her hand up to block the light, squinting against the glare. A moment later, the blue-white light flashed away, leaving behind an ocean of black, sprinkled with white stars. Message panels flashed on her displays and alarms sounded as the FTL engines wound down.
“We didn’t die!” Lincoln cheered, laughing and slapping the console in front of him.
Greer’s one-sided smile turned into a full grin, then finally laughter. “We did it.”
The computer calculated their position and she clapped her hands as she read the data. “We came out…the wrong place. Way wrong.”
“How…oh, would you look at that?” Lincoln pointed out the front windows as an azure-colored gas giant with wide rings came into view.
“That’s not Negev. We were supposed to come out of FTL over Negev. That’s Janus, right? One of the gas giants in the Terra Nova system,” Greer said as she tapped at her astrogation controls. “Please be Janus. Please oh please oh please.”
“It is.” Lincoln sighed with relief. “Just made contact with some of our data collection satellites. We may have overshot Negev by a bit.”
“Ready a data transmission back to Terra Nova. I’m going to strangle those pencil neck engineers that screwed this up.”
“Let’s not spoil our big moment with homicide, yeah?” Lincoln said. “We need those pencil necks to get us back in one jump too.”
“At least the damn thing almost works as intended,” Greer muttered.
Chapter 9
The Valiant dropped through the clouds above Terra Nova’s spaceport to a chorus of cheers and applause. Carson, despite herself, couldn’t help but smile and soon found herself cheering and clapping along with the rest of them.
A stage had been erected on the tarmac, just in front of the crowd, filled with the team of engineers that had worked on the project. They shook hands, laughed, and slapped each other on the back as the Valiant flew overhead, its engines thrumming with energy.
The FTL drives were bulky things and looked out of place on the sprinter. Carson was surprised the ship could still handle flight in atmosphere. The fact that the Valiant was flying at all impressed Carson even more. The entire refit had only taken a week, practically an eye blink in terms of normal ship construction. Not to mention, the engineers were integrating alien technology into components and no one really knew if they’d be able to handle the load.
As the clapping and cheering continued, Carson scanned the crowd. Almost the entire colony had shown up for the event, spread out down both sides of the ru
nway. Several rows of bleachers were filled with colonial leaders and section heads; the rest of the colony had filled in wherever there was space. On top of cars, on warehouse roofs, even several Mule shuttles that were parked on the far side of the runway.
Hale, however, was notably absent from the festivities. As was his wife. Elias and Jerry stood near the main stage, laughing and pointing as the Valiant slowed and flared for landing. Carson scanned the crowd as the clapping died down, wondering if she’d just missed them in the celebrations.
What could be more important than this? Carson thought, slipping her hands into the pockets of her camouflaged overalls. As far as she knew, this was the first human ship to ever travel FTL and was a major milestone, even if the vast majority of the species back in the Milky Way might never know of it.
Birch stepped up beside Carson, nodding to the Valiant as it settled onto its landing struts. “Greer’s one lucky bastard, eh, Chief?”
Carson chuckled. “Probably won’t ever have to buy drinks again.”
“Eh, it’ll wear off. Even I have to buy drinks occasionally.”
Carson raised her eyebrow at him. He’d never talked about his Medal of Honor, usually shying away from the topic as soon as possible. She hoped that merely mentioning it meant that he was warming up to her.
“A joke,” he said, grinning. “I buy drinks all the time.”
“Well, regardless, I’m sure this will make her even that much more insufferable. Pilots are bad enough as it is; give them dibs on something noteworthy like this and you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Amen.”
“Where’s the rest of the team?” Carson asked, checking behind her.
“Watching from the Room.”
“Let me guess, Nunez is going to need some stims.”
Birch smiled. “His supply of Standish Reserve is bound to run out sooner or later.”
“At the rate he’s going, it’ll be sooner,” Carson said. “Decided not to join them?”
“Are you kidding? This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, Chief. I wanted to get as close as possible. Faster than light travel? Something special. Even if it did take the original colonists to be enslaved and learn the systems. That stain will never go away.”
“I’m going to have to sneak a look at the new drives once the festivities die down a bit. I tried to get some inside looks during construction, but you know how engineers are.”
Carson sniffed. “Probably a lot like pilots.”
“Indeed.”
A loud cheer rose from the crowd, accompanied by whistles and shouting, as Rachel Greer and her copilot, Oscar Lincoln, walked down Valiant’s cargo ramp. They waved to the crowd, broad smiles plastered on their faces.
Several of the engineers descended the stairs from the stage to meet them on the tarmac, shaking hands and hugging the two pilots.
Birch scoffed and Carson gave him a quizzical look.
“Just glad it’s not me out there,” he explained, nodding to the growing group around the pilots. People were leaving the stands and flowing through the barricades at the edge of the tarmac to congratulate and shake hands with the two heroes of the hour.
“You and me both,” Carson said. “I’d much rather be—”
Her wrist unit chimed, interrupting her. She pulled back her sleeve and read the message. “Huh,” she said, reading the message again.
“What’s up, Chief?”
Carson dismissed the message with a flick of her finger. “Come on; apparently, we have work to do.”
West jogged up to them as they approached the Command Post ten minutes later. “Chief,” he said, falling into step beside Carson.
“Sorry to interrupt family time, Sergeant.”
“When duty calls…” West shrugged. “Do we know what it’s about?”
Carson shook her head. “Message said it was priority, that’s I all know.”
“I have a feeling every message we get from here on out will be priority,” West said.
“You’re probably right.”
“I have the team prepping for dust-off just in case,” West said, opening the door.
“Good,” Carson said.
Hale looked up from the far end of the holo-table as Carson and her two Pathfinders entered the Command Post. Marie turned from one of the side stations, holding out a data pad for her husband, smiling at Carson as she stepped around the table.
Several of the displays were showing replays of Valiant’s landing at the spaceport. While others showed multiple exterior feeds from the ships in orbit, showing the sprinter actually going to warp; a flash of light and the ship simply vanished. Data from the event streamed into several stations, the technicians frantically making notes and recording the information.
“Chief,” Hale said, accepting the proffered pad. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Sir.”
He tapped a command into the pad and the holographic image of the severed alien head Carson had brought back from the skies over Negev appeared above the table. It rotated slowly, eyes closed, the wires and cables attached to the back of its head disappearing into the air below.
Carson had a feeling she knew where this briefing was going to lead.
“We’ve been able to extract some data from the cyborg device you recovered,” Hale said. “Most of it is corrupted, and what information we did manage to decrypt seems to be incomplete, but it’s a start. We’re hoping that the Ultari survivor will be able to fill in the gaps, but I’m not hinging any bets on that.”
“Any information on why these two factions look so much alike? They seemed to be at odds almost immediately,” Carson said.
“None. Again, we’re hoping the survivor can shed some light on that.”
He tapped the pad and a star field appeared next to the floating head. “As you can see, this map is only a fragment. The rest of the data was corrupted; however, we’ve been able to piece it together with our own stellar data and came up with this.”
The alien head disappeared and the map fragment shrank as additional stars came into focus around it. A red line drew itself around a star on the right side of the map and a panel appeared identifying the system as Terra Nova. Another circle appeared around a star near the top of the map, the words “UNKNOWN” appearing in a panel above it.
“This appears to be a system controlled by the Sacred Intelligence. The data doesn’t give us any more than that, only that it’s the closest settlement to Terra Nova, at seven light years away. Doctor Schneider tells me that according to their simulations, with the new warp engines, Valiant should be able to make the trip in just over a week.”
Carson felt a chill run down her back. She tried to keep the uncertainty out of her voice and failed. “You want us to make first contact with the cyborgs, sir?”
“That’s right, Chief Carson. I need your team to do just that.”
“I just—” Carson started, but Hale interrupted.
“I understand your reservations, even better than you know. However, I don’t have any other options. We’re alone out here, Chief, and if we’re going to survive, we’re going to need allies. I don't believe for a minute that we’re done with the Ultari or the Triumvirate.”
“And you think this other faction will help us, sir?”
“That is what all the information we’ve seen so far suggests, Chief,” Marie Hale said, stepping up beside her husband. “The two sides went to blows as soon as they knew the other was there. If they’re at war with each other, then we can leverage that in our favor. The Triumvirate knows what we’ve got, Crucible technology. They made a try for it once. They’ll come back and if they bring another fleet like the one that fought over Negev…it won’t end well for us. We don’t have the time or manpower right now to beat a threat that strong.”
Carson’s stomach turned at the thought as the three hundred and twelve dead aboard the Belisarius reasons to not go on this mission flooded her mind.
“Do we know anything ab
out the world?” West asked. “Is it habitable?”
“All the data we’ve seen suggests that its atmosphere would be,” Marie said, then shrugged. “Our satellites have had their telescopes on that system for days. But this planet seems to be on the wrong side of its system primary star for us to see it. Our bad luck. But by the orbit of the other planets and the wobble of the primary, the planet is there and in the Goldilocks’ Zone of habitability.”
“Regardless,” Hale said. “We need to make contact and ascertain whether or not this faction can help us.”
“And if they can’t, or won’t?” Carson asked.
“We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” Hale said. “Take advantage of Valiant’s stealth systems. Ghost into the system and surveil them prior to making contact. If you determine their intentions to be hostile, back out and return to Terra Nova. However, I want that to be your last option. If we can persuade them to join our side, or at least provide us with the information we need to fight against the Ultari, I want you to make every effort to turn them into an ally. Can your team handle that, Chief?”
Carson let out a long breath, careful to hide her frustration. “Pathfinders light the darkness, sir. We’re trained for first contact missions.”
Hale nodded. “Good.”
Marie tossed a small leather pouch onto the table. It slid across the surface, stopping several inches from Carson. “We took these off the survivor.”
Carson picked up the bag, loosened the knot, and poured the contents into her hand. Small golden pyramids, each facet inlaid with what looked like circuitry, tumbled out of the pouch.
“Ultari money,” Marie explained. “We think. Ms. Scartucci was able to translate the markings and found they’re in round numbers. If that’s enough for lunch or a new starship is anyone’s guess.”
Carson turned one of pyramids over, holding it in her thumb and forefinger. Human society hadn’t used physical money since the start of the Xaros war. It seemed strange that a race with the capability to travel faster than light would still resort to such a primitive concept as coinage.
