by G J Ogden
Casey adjusted course and increased power to the thrusters, while nervously muttering, “Aye, aye, Captain Taylor Ray,” under her breath.
Taylor enabled the image intensifier and focused in on the target location. The viewport switched modes and a few seconds later an ethereal image of a vast complex of structures materialized on the screen. He checked the display on his chair’s console screen, which was showing a wireframe representation of the surface layout that had been constructed from Satomi’s sensor scans.
“From the design, I’d say it’s definitely a starship base, and definitely Hedalt in origin,” commented Taylor. “No way of telling how long it’s been here, though.”
“I don’t see any ships on the landin’ pads,” Blake added, “but Satomi’s right; a lotta those structures sure look like hangars, and I’m pickin’ up some sorta sub-structure too.”
“What kind of sub-structure?” asked Taylor, checking his panel to assess the readings.
“I ain’t gotta clue, but whatever’s underneath all this, there’s a helluva lot of it. There’s maybe double the area of the surface structures hidden down there.”
Casey interrupted to give a status report, “We’re three hundred meters from the source, altitude five hundred.”
“Okay, keep it stead...”
“Power readings are spiking!” Satomi cut across them both; her voice urgent, almost frantic.
Taylor pushed himself out of the chair. “Where? Focus the viewport on the source.”
Satomi rapidly input the commands and the image on the viewport switched to show a thick, rectangular tower with a spherical top half, which was spinning towards them.
“It’s a watch tower!” shouted Blake.
Taylor ran forward and grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair, “Casey, get us out of range of that tower, smartly!”
Casey didn’t answer with her customary response and instead instantly sprang into action, yanking back hard on the controls and pushing the thruster lever forwards. The ship responded, fighting against the moon’s gravity, and began accelerating hard, surging away from the Hedalt base and climbing rapidly. But then another alarm sounded on the bridge and the Nimrod-class cruiser was rocked, as if the hull had been pummeled with a giant baseball bat.
“We’re hit!” shouted Satomi.
“No shit!” Blake called out in reply, but then held his tongue as Taylor stumbled from Casey’s chair to the back of Blake’s and glowered down at him.
“Just take out that watch tower, now!” shouted Taylor, struggling to stay on his feet as the ship lurched and buffeted from side-to-side.
Blake uncoiled and sprang into action, targeting the watch tower with the aft turret and opening fire in a matter of seconds. The main viewport showed the rounds raking across the spherical upper portion of the tower, and a second later it exploded.
“Good shot, Blake!” cried Taylor, but his elation was short-lived.
“I’m losing altitude!” shouted Casey.
“Satomi, damage report!”
“Minor hull breach,” Satomi called out, before another violent shimmy almost threw her from her chair. “The ablative armor took the brunt of the hit, but we’ve got red lights across a dozen secondary systems and…”
“Just tell us why we’re falling…” Taylor shouted, cutting Satomi off mid-sentence.
There was a brief pause, while Satomi scanned ahead on the damage report, “Four ventral thrusters have been destroyed.”
“Can we still make it out of this cave?”
The question was directed at Satomi, but it was Casey that responded. “No way, Cap, we don’t have enough thrust to make the climb,” she said, wrestling with the controls, “and even if I boosted us up there with the main engines, she’s writhing around like a python; chances are we’d just end up smashed against the cave wall.”
“Damn it!” Taylor cursed, gripping the back of Blake’s chair even more tightly. If they couldn’t get out there was only one option left, but he knew the crew wouldn’t like it. He didn’t like it himself.
“Casey, you’re going to have to set us down on one of the landing pads on the base below.”
“What, are you crazy?!” Blake shouted, craning his neck to stare up a Taylor. “If they’re firin’ at us then this ain’t no ghost base!”
“We don’t have a choice,” Taylor hit back. Then he jabbed a finger towards Blake, as if he was pointing a gun, “I want you to keep the cannons trained on the surface and take out anything that even looks like it’s moving, got it?” Blake didn’t answer and just gritted his teeth. “Then as soon as we land, prepare the expedition gear. We’ll have to inspect the damage and make repairs on the ground.” Blake looked ready to argue back, but Taylor didn’t allow it. “Is that clear, Specialist Meade?”
Blake pressed his teeth evenly more tightly together and spun his chair back to face his console. “Yes, sir,” he growled.
Taylor staggered back behind Casey’s chair and rested his hand on her shoulder. He added gentle pressure, causing her to look away from her pilot’s viewport and into his eyes.
“Casey, if anyone can land this thing it’s you. Can you handle it?”
Casey’s eyes wavered; she looked terrified, like a kid on their first day of school, but she managed to nod her head in short staccato movements and say, “Aye, aye, Captain Taylor Ray,” though the words lacked any of her usual brightness and confidence.
The ship was shaken again as Taylor lurched back to his command chair and practically fell into it. Casey angled the nose of the ship back down towards the Hedalt base, battling with the controls, which were fighting against her like a toddler having a tantrum due to the damaged reaction control system thruster array.
“Energy surge ahead... it’s another watch tower!” Satomi shouted, but this time Blake needed no warning, firing the forward cannons and reducing the tower to rubble, before the spherical turret had chance to engage them.
“Well done, Blake!” Taylor cried out, and though he couldn’t see it, the corner of Blake’s mouth twisted into a satisfied smile.
Suddenly, the ship veered violently off course, forcing Casey to make a series of rapid adjustments; her hands and feet moving so fast they were almost a blur. Taylor observed her in amazement, thankful for his kooky, purple sneaker-wearing pilot more than ever, knowing that ninety-nine percent of the other DSR pilots in Earth Fleet would have likely already crashed by this point.
“We’ve lost another RCS thruster!” Casey called out, reaching forward and adjusting the power distribution of the remaining thrusters to compensate for the loss.
“Just keep going, we’re almost there!” Taylor called out, aware that the landing pad was approaching fast; faster than he would like. He glanced down to check the console in the arm of his chair, reading out the distances in his head.
Two hundred meters...
One hundred meters...
Fifty meters...
Come on Casey, slow this hulk of metal down!
Casey’s concentration had become almost transcendental, so much so that she had become deaf to the clamor on the bridge; her world had become only what she could see through her pilot’s viewport. Twenty meters from the deck she shunted all power into the remaining ventral thrusters and pushed them beyond their red line, cutting the ship’s descent velocity to a crawl with only five meters to spare. She kicked out the landing struts, levelled off the ship and dropped it onto the deck as delicately as if it had been a routine landing on automatic. Pushing her viewport away from her eyes, she flipped a sequence of switches to power down the main reactor and RCS system, which was on the brink of blowing up, and then slumped back into her chair, letting every muscle in her body go slack.
“Landing complete, Cap,” she said, after blowing out a sigh.
Taylor slammed his hands down on the arms of his chair, “Incredible, as always, Casey!” he cried, with the jubilant relief of someone who had just played Russian Roulette and won. He wasn’t
just blowing smoke, either – the deftness of the landing under such challenging and stressful circumstances was a simply amazing feat of starship piloting. Casey tipped the seat back, slanted her head towards Taylor and returned a relieved, but also roguish smile that was much more like the Casey that Taylor knew so well.
Taylor twisted to face the missions ops station, “Satomi, are there any other signs of movement on the base? Ships powering up, ground soldiers, drones, anything?”
Satomi shook her head, “Negative, Captain. The rest of base is still completely dead, apart from the same weak power signature we detected initially.” She continued to cycle through her scan readings and then looked up at Taylor, “The watch towers were just automated defense systems, and like the drones they were badly decayed. The plasma shard that hit us wasn’t at full power, which is lucky, because if it had been we’d already be atoms.”
“You call bein’ crippled inside this lava thing luck?” Blake chimed in. His tone was more sour than a lemon.
“Any enemy contact where we all walk away is a good one, Blake,” Taylor answered, “Now, cut the attitude so we can figure out how to repair the ship and can get off this rock.”
Rather than glower back at Taylor, Blake actually looked embarrassed, “Sorry, Cap. I know I speak out of turn sometimes. I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“Sometimes…” murmured Satomi, but not loud enough that Blake could hear.
“It’s okay Blake, I know it was a close call. But right now we need you focused. Break out the expedition gear, but make sure every turret on this ship stays hot. We’re not out of danger yet.”
Blake nodded and then punched a sequence of controls on his console to set the turrets to perimeter defense mode. He then sprang out of his seat and was half-way to the door leading off the bridge when Satomi suddenly spoke up.
“Captain...”
Taylor knew instantly that the fact she was calling him ‘Captain’ and not ‘Taylor’ didn’t bode well. “What’s up Satomi? And please don’t tell me it’s more bad news.”
“Well, I suppose it’s more what you’d call unusual news than bad news. Though it’s also not good news,” Satomi replied, sounding as uncertain as her description had been unclear.
“Spit it out already…” snapped Blake, impatiently; he’d stopped on the door threshold, waiting to hear what Satomi had to say.
“We’ve lost our uplink to the CoreNet.”
Taylor stood and hurried over to the mission ops station, “What, completely lost connection? I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It shouldn’t be,” said Satomi. “Given how the system was designed and the nature of super-luminal signal transmission, we should always be linked to the CoreNet, through the Fabric, even at this range.” Satomi worked the console, checking their position relative to their previous location. “We’re unusually distant from the nearest super-luminal transceiver, but while the signal may take longer, we should still always have a link. Except down here, it’s completely cut off.”
“What does that mean?” asked Blake, still hovering by the door. “Is that bad?”
Taylor sighed. “The only reason a ship would ever lose its connection to the CoreNet is if it had been destroyed. Basically, Earth Fleet is going to assume that we’re dead.”
“But, that’s good isn’t it?” Casey chimed in. “We’ll get sent a rescue?”
“We’re out in frontier territory here, Casey,” said Taylor, shaking his head, “it could be months before Earth Fleet considers a search and rescue mission, if they even bother to send one at all. As harsh as it sounds, the cost and risk of sending a SAR mission out this far, just for a four-person deep-space recon expedition, is probably too high. They could end up losing two crews, and two ships.”
“What? That’s... cold,” said Casey, and she shuddered as if an icy breeze had just whipped past her.
“So, whadda we do, Cap?” added Blake, surprisingly calmly, but also with a resigned air. Taylor had half-expected Blake to blow up at the news that a rescue mission was unlikely, but then he realized Blake would already know the guidelines for SAR operations, since they fell under the remit of the TacSpec division. If they were to get out of the lava tube, they’d have to do it without outside help. Blake knew that, which is why he’d switched modes.
“We stick to the plan,” said Taylor, assertively. “We fix up the ship and then haul ass home, before Earth Fleet decides to write our obituaries and sell off all our assets.”
Blake’s eyes widened, but he, like the others, knew that Taylor wasn’t joking.
SEVEN
Taylor, Satomi and Casey were gathered in the rear cargo bay when Blake bustled in, laden with four sets of expedition gear, each set consisting of body armor, a powerful sidearm with solid slug and explosive round clips, stored in pouches on the armored vest, and a backpack with various tools and medical supplies. His face and body were barely discernable underneath the mass of equipment.
“You didn’t have to bring it all at once, you know?” laughed Casey, “You look like a walking storeroom.”
Blake staggered further into the cargo bay and then unceremoniously dumped all the kit on the deck. He sucked in a breath and let it out, resting his aching hands on his hips, “You’re welcome, Casey.”
Taylor picked up the body armor and then glanced over to the environment suits hanging up on the wall, “We’re going to have to put the environment suits on over this armor,” he said slipping his on.
“That’ll be a tight fit,” grumbled Blake.
“Maybe for you,” said Casey, “Perhaps you should cut down on the midnight snacks?”
Blake beat his chest like a gorilla, “This is pure muscle, Casey. I’m not surprised you don’t know what that looks like…”
“Alright, knock it off you two,” said Taylor, picking up a second set of body armor and slinging it towards Blake, who caught it. “Let’s suit up quickly; I don’t want to spend any more time here than necessary.”
Blake had been right, though; the armor was a tight fit underneath the environment suits, but the suit was required in order to venture outside, into the moon’s thin, toxic atmosphere. There was another reason too; if it turned out they didn’t have the parts needed to repair the ship, they’d have to hunt for them in the mysterious structures hidden inside the lava tube. And to get to the buildings they’d have to traverse the distance on foot. If there were any Hedalt still alive on the base, they hadn’t granted them the courtesy of extending a docking tunnel to their ship.
Taylor finished donning his environment suit and powered it up, checking the status display in the visor, which showed his vital signs and information about the environment outside the suit; currently just the normal atmosphere inside the ship. A few seconds later a red chevron appeared in the top-right of his display, followed by searing red text in the middle of his visor, which read, ‘CoreNet connection lost. Abort mission. Immediately re-establish connection to CoreNet.’ Taylor angrily dismissed the alert with a flick of his eyes. That’s what I’m trying to do...
He waited until the names of the other three crew members flashed up in his visor display, indicating that their suits were online too, and then stepped in front of the bay door.
“Okay, Satomi, depressurize the bay and extend the ramp,” Taylor ordered, while removing the sidearm from its magnetic stow on the hip of his environment suit. Satomi nodded with some difficulty, due to the restrictive suit, and turned to the control panel. A few seconds later, Taylor could see the atmosphere reading start to change as the breathable air was blown out and replaced by the toxic carbon monoxide based atmosphere inside the lava tube.
Taylor cautiously stepped a few paces down the ramp, but was then passed by Blake, who raced ahead, weapon raised.
“Take it easy, Blake,” cautioned Taylor, but Blake waved him off.
“If they were goin’ to shoot at us they woulda done it already,” said Blake, checking underneath the ship and then quick
ly surveying the surrounding area, but everything was as deathly quiet as a tomb. “We’re clear down here, come on out.”
Taylor finished moving out, followed by Satomi and Casey who exited the ship side-by-side; neither had their weapons drawn.
There was no real need for Taylor or Blake to have their weapons drawn either, because the turrets on the Nimrod-class cruiser were still all active and in perimeter defense mode. Even if a full platoon of Hedalt soldiers suddenly charged out of hiding, they would be cut down in an instant by the ship’s powerful weapons. However, holding the sidearm made Blake feel more in control, helping to instill within him the courage to take the lead. Taylor welcomed the reassuring feeling of being prepared to defend himself too, but the difference was that Taylor knew it was just a false sense of security, whereas the weapon made Blake feel genuinely indomitable.
They gathered together on the smooth artificial surface of the landing pad, sheltered under the hull of the ship and further protected by the ventral turret directly above their heads, which was ever watchful for signs of enemy contact. The ship’s floodlights were the only source of illumination other than the torches in their environment suits, but the light didn’t penetrate far and it felt like they’d landed in a void that was even emptier than space.
Casey concentrated the lights in her suit helmet into a focused column and peered up at the hull to inspect the damage, using the image enhancement feature of her helmet visor to zoom in on the worst affected sections of the ship.
“How bad is it, Casey?” asked Taylor after his pilot had been silent for a few moments.
Casey didn’t answer right away and instead flitted around under the ship, swinging stylishly around the landing struts as if they were lamp posts, while inspecting the different points of damage. The display in her visor updated in real-time to show the damage report for the specific areas that she focused on.
“It’s not all that bad, Cap,” Casey eventually answered, while pirouetting around the aft, port-side landing strut to face the others again. She sounded upbeat. “The ablative armor can be patched up with spares we already have on the ship, and the secondary systems are no problem. Mostly, it’s a case of replacing fried circuits and repairing broken conduits, and the repair drones can take care of that.” She looked over at Satomi and even through the visor Satomi could see she was grinning, “The water heating system is down in section three, though.”
