Sleeping in the Stars (Marston Chronicles Book 1)

by D Patrick Wagner

  Wobbly, Krag staggered over to Keiko’s pod and initiated the emergency release. Following that, he did the same for Mack. Back to Keiko, he felt for pulse and breathing. Satisfied, he gave her a fairly strong shake and waited as she swam up from the sleep of the dead and into the harsh awakening of the present.

  “Are you back?” the worry in his voice bespoke of his concern.

  “Yes, Krag,” Keiko answered.

  “Can you function? Can you find Weiskoff?”

  Keiko studied her displays, worked slides, touched icons. After a longer than normal period of time, she answered, “I can’t find him, Captain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not out there. He’s not showing up on any of the sensors. None of his ships are.”

  “We only have the forward sensors. I’m going to take the ship in a slow three-sixty. Keep looking. Find him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A very tense two minutes passed as Krag used the maneuvering jets to rotate the ship on its Z-axis.

  “Nothing, Captain. Odin isn’t out there.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Mack, any thoughts?”

  “None, Cap.”

  “Everyone, stay in your pods. Sue, stay strapped in. We need to find out what is going on.”

  “Buster, plot a course to the asteroids.”

  “Unable to do that, Captain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are no longer in the Cencore system, Sir.”

  “What?”

  “We are no longer in the Cencore system, Sir.”

  “I heard you the first time. Where are we?”

  “Unknown, Captain.”

  “Well, find out!” Krag almost shouted.

  “We are not in any known space, Captain.”

  “Any known constellations within sight?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Keiko, look around. Find out where we are.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Mack, find out what the damage is. We need to get this ship running.”

  “On it, Cap,” Mack responded as he climbed out of his pod.

  “Captain, I think I know where we are.” Keiko’s voice displayed incredulity and despair.

  “And?”

  “I started distorting known constellations and got a distorted match. We are approximately five hundred light years from the Federacy, in the dead space between the Perseus Arm and the Orion Arm of the galaxy.”

  Chapter 14

  Aboard Griffin

  For a month everyone worked like slaves. Only enough sleep to keep going, minimum and simplest of foods, long hours and worn out bodies was the fare. The blackness of space, the coldness of being stranded with no where to go drowned the four souls’ emotions into borderline despair.

  Against this backdrop Krag, Keiko, Mack and Sue sat at their table, in their selected chairs and ate their meagre meals.

  “Mack,” Krag began. “Are we ready?”

  “As we can be, Cap. The center engine is ready. We can flip over and give it a short burst to check, but it’s ready.”

  Krag Marston, always being the captain, the leader, worked hard to keep his people involved. “Ok, then. Set up a test and let’s see if our broken dog still hunts.”

  “Dog again, Cap? We’re still thinking about dogs?” Even in his ground down state, Mack still kept his humour intact.

  “I’ll take you to Australia Minor, see my family farm. I’ll show you dogs, Space baby.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Put your money where your mouth is, bucko.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Ya, Cap. And about the rest. Here’s hoping your guess is right.”

  “It has to be Mack. We know there is no way in the deep dark that we got here on Human tech. The alien artifact had to have done something. It had to have gotten us here.”

  “Where ever here is, Cap. But, what? What did that thingamajig do?”

  “As we discussed, we know that Weiskoff fired some sort of EMP weapon, frying everything in back of the artifact.”

  “Ya.”

  “And, we know, from your evaluation, the struts flexed when we hit that cylinder with some X-rays.”

  “Ya. So, as you said, your guess is that that right bastard tried to kill Griffin with an EMP bomb and kill us with X-rays.”

  “I know him. I think he did try to kill us. With some sort of X-ray gun. I definitely wouldn’t put it past him or the Federacy, to come up with that sort of weapon.”

  “I really don’t like that man.”

  “Neither do I, Sue.”

  Keiko simply watched while everyone re-hashed a conversation they had been having for the last month.

  “There is no other choice, Mack. Sue. Krag is right. We have to believe that this is what happened. If it isn’t, we will never get home.”

  “Thank you, Keiko. Mack, you’re right. We’re guessing.”

  “Gambling is more like it.”

  “And, here we are. Time to roll the dice. Put our money where our mouth is. Sue, ready with our artifact test?

  The nervous software engineer pushed some slop around on the plate, chewed a lip, then responded. “Yes, Sir. Mack and I have reworked all of the wiring, mountings and connections. Nothing is going to come loose or break. I’ve isolated enough data core to keep recordings of everything recordable. I’m ready.”

  Nodding, Krag turned to Keiko. “Keiko, how pinpoint accurate have you confirmed our position?” Even through the month-long ordeal, the two had become closer, more intimate.

  “Within a thousand kilometres, Krag.”

  “Buster, what is our status on consumables?

  “With our recyclers now operational, we now are back to unlimited air and water. We used a minimum amount of fuel during our attempted escape, so, except for about five percent, we have a maximum load. Foodstuffs, at normal consumption, we have three months of inventory.”

  “That’s it. Everyone rest up. And everyone, take showers. Gods, we stink. And clean your liners and clothes. Now that we have water, we can get back to being normal. Tomorrow we test. When we wake up, and I mean when, not if, we wake up, we rest up and finalize our plan on getting home.”

  * * * * *

  The next morning found a very nervous crew in their positions, intently rechecking their responsibilities. Krag sat in his command pod. Mack, using his sensors/weapons pod as a ship’s monitor, began the sequence that activated his cocooning. Keiko matched Mack’s actions while double checking their position and mentally reviewing the actions she needed to perform for flipping the ship and firing the one lonely engine.

  Sue and Mack had installed a monitoring station in her cabin that linked to the artifact and all the attached equipment. With the remote control pad, she could stay in her gravity bag and activate the artifact, using the X-ray machine.

  “Ok people. Now’s the time. Here’s the place. Everyone strapped in?”

  All three responded with positives.

  “Keiko, you’re up. As a reminder, twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, one hundred. Ten second bursts.”

  Aye, aye, Captain,” Keiko responded in her professional guise. She knew that Krag didn’t doubt her capabilities. He was just double checking and reminding her of the process.

  Carefully, under the watchful eye of Krag, she used the control thrusters and flipped the Griffin end-for-end, resulting in a heading that, hopefully, brought them back to their home.

  Mack monitored. “Well done, Wee Bird.”

  Then Keiko set her board to twenty-five percent thrust and tapped the ignition icon. Everyone felt the minimal pressure.

  Ten seconds later everything went quiet.

  “Mack?”

  “All good, Cap. The girl is showing her spunk.”

  “Keiko, next.”

  Three more times, each with increasing power, Keiko fired up and shut down the engine. Three more times Mack monitored and reported the results. Everything checked out as it s
hould. The Griffin proved itself to be the sturdy, but broken, ship that everyone knew it to be.

  “Mack, all good?”

  “Right as rain, Cap. Griffin won’t let us down.”

  “Anyone need a break? Potty? Food?”

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Sue responded.

  “Ya, Cap. It’s like a cold shower. Just step in, take the chill.”

  “I agree, Captain.” Keiko completed the unanimous response.

  “Moment of truth. See you all on the other side. Keiko, Sue, do your stuff.”

  Keiko brought the single thruster up to one hundred percent. Sue tapped the large red icon on her tablet. Two hundred fifty-thousand electron volts of x-rays fired into the artifact.

  * * * * *

  Ten hours later everyone began to stir. Groggily the three on the bridge opened their pods. Sue struggled out or her gravity bag. They all stretched, groaned and fought their way back to normalcy.

  “Mack, awake?”

  “Ya, Cap.”

  “Status?”

  “Board looks good. Told ya Griffin wouldn’t let us down. She’s a right sturdy lass. Like that lassie back there.”

  “Don’t you go comparing me to some bucket of bolts, Lug-Nut.”

  “Just sayin’. You got us here, wherever that is, Lassie. And everyone’s peaches. Just sayin’.”

  “Speaking of here, Keiko, you there?”

  “Yes, Captain,” She responded, still in professional mode.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just a moment.”

  Everyone sat, waited, hoped. The wait ended.

  “We moved just a little under seven-tenths of a light year. Towards home.”

  “Yes!” shouted Mack as he jumped from his pod.

  “Sue, your hear that?” Krag asked.

  “Yes, Captain.” The pride in her voice spilled through.

  “We meet in the galley. Have a real dinner. Celebrate. Then tomorrow we finalize the plan to get home. Good job, people!”

  With new vigour, everyone hustled to the galley and took the now standard seating formation. Mack arrived last. He proclaimed, “I’m hungry!”, and headed for the servitor.

  “You heard the man,” Krag laughed. “Eat. Drink. Anything. Celebrate!”

  Krag watched as Keiko and Sue scrambled after Mack. Then he rose and followed behind.

  The rest of the evening consisted of the best food the replicator could offer, moderate amounts of alcoholic beverages, friendly banter, bragging about their successes and ribbing about their bumbles. The evening wound down. Krag rose, raised his glass and waited. The other three stood with him and raised theirs.

  “I want to thank you for the extreme effort you all undertook. You did something that no one would think of a possible. We have a chance for home.” Raising his glass higher, “To home!”

  “To Home!” the other three responded.

  “I bushed. I’m going to bed.” Krag finished bussing the remnants of his meal and headed for his cabin.

  Mack gave Keiko a raised eyebrow look and whispered, “Well?”

  “We’ll clean up,” offered Sue

  Keiko took off, chased down Krag and dragged him back to the executive suite. Their night went well.

  Mack and Sue, true to their word, cleaned the galley. Then, with a longer pause than normal, with a lot of alcohol swimming in their blood and hormones flooding their systems, they reluctantly said their goodnights. Each went to their own cabins, two highly intelligent, socially pubescent people not reading the signals.

  * * * * *

  A tired Krag, a Cheshire-cat Keiko, an anticipatory Mack and a nervous Sue met the next morning at the designated time in the galley. Singly they accessed the servitor, requested morning drinks, assorted breakfasts and took their now-standard seats. Mack had brought a 3D holographic generator and set it in the center of their table. Breakfast finished. Everyone bussed their detritus, returned to the table and sat, anxious to get started.

  “Mack, fire up the holo and set it for a wide angle of our current location.”

  A gauzy, blackish sphere materialized over the table, forcing the participants to crane their necks. Tiny bright spots speckled the globe. One red dot winked.

  “Keiko?”

  Keiko pulled her data pad from a pocket, placed it on the table and manipulated some slides and icons. The specks of light disappeared. Others appeared. The red dot shifted, placing it at the top. A green dot appeared at the bottom, just above the table.

  Keiko pointed to the red dot. "This is us” She pointed to the green dot. “That is the Arium star. The distance between the two is four hundred, ninety-seven lightyears.”

  Krag took over. “Let’s go through the numbers. We fire up the artifact. It jumps the ship three-quarters of a lightyear and we get knocked out for ten hours. If we allow six hours of recovery time, that gives us a jump cycle of sixteen hours, three jumps every two days. That works out to a lightyear a day. Four hundred and ninety-seven days, one year, four and a half months. Griffin can make it. We’ll starve before then. We stick to the plan.

  “I don’t like it, Cap. But I can’t see any other choice.”

  “That’s right. We have no choice. All but one of us go into the cryogenic tanks. The one awake lives on three-quarters rations. He, or she, performs three jumps in two days and does that over eight days. After twelve jumps he, or she, should be exhausted and half crazy. He wakes the next person in the shift and the whole process is repeated. A year and a half from now we are back at the shipyards.”

  “Easy-peasy. I’m in.” Mack’s false bravado came through in his pronouncement.

  Keiko and Sue nodded heads and voiced their consent.

  “We go boy-girl, boy-girl. I take the first shift. Keiko follows. Then Mack. Then Sue. Agreed?”

  The three others agreed.

  “And don’t leave your dirty dishes for the next guy!” Mack pronounced and everyone laughed.

  “Let’s get settled in and I’ll get started.”

  The four of them headed to the cargo bay. “Buster, open all four Cryo-tanks and run diagnostics, please.”

  Four floor plates popped open. Four sets of control panel lights performed a series of flickers then remained steady.

  “All test as ready, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Buster. Keiko, You’re first. You’ve been through it before. In your suite. But this one is more powerful. And it has life support.”

  Keiko stripped down to her liner, climbed in to her designated cryo-tank and lay down, squirming to get comfortable. Krag knelt beside her, smiled his warmest smile and closed the lid.

  Mack and Sue followed suit. After their entombment and status checks, Krag headed up to the bridge, climbed into the command pod and activated the closing sequence.

  “Well, Buster. It’s just you and me again.” With a big sigh, “Here goes nothing.”

  Krag Marston, ex-flight commander, ex-fighter pilot, current valuable cargo transporter and sometime smuggler, pressed the jump icon.

  Aboard Odin

  Vice-Admiral Theodore Millhouse Weiskoff, the Third, sat straight backed and rigidly at attention at his desk in his commander’s quarters. His clasped hands and forearms rested on the desk. A monitor stood in the desk’s center, powered up and displaying Admiral Theodore Millhouse Weiskoff, the Second.

  “This is important, Theo.”

  “But Father, so is catching Marston, getting back the artifact.”

  “You’ve had a month since he and his ship disappeared. Your vacation is over. We have a much bigger issue.”

  “But, Sir.”

  “No Buts,” the Admiral interrupted.

  “This is top secret. Need to know. We’ve lost contact with Yeni Persia.”

  “Lost contact?” the Vice-Admiral leaned forward. “What do you mean by lost contact?”

  “All traffic in never comes back. No traffic comes out. No communication buoys, no data carriers. And we know why.”

&
nbsp; Suppressing his frustration at not chasing Marston, the Vice-Admiral focused on his father. “Why?”

  “A patrol ship, the Attestant of Light, escaped from Yeni Persia. It’s now holed up at Nyu-Nippon. I ordered it quarantined, cut off from all communications. It has a boatload of data and recordings. Videos of an alien invasion.”

  “What?” Theo almost came out of his chair. “Aliens?”

  “Yes. An alien invasion. I’ve ordered a complete information blackout. The few people who know about this, besides the Attestant, have been issued a military gag order. Anyone disobeying that order will be summarily executed for treason. This can not get out.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Raid our science division. Take anyone that is an alientologist, or close to it. Take some linguistic specialists. Take anyone, anything you think you might need. Go to Dorogon. Seize the Attestant. Get your people on to studying everything that the ship brought back.”

  “What about Yeni Persia?”

  “Send unmanned probes. Collect all the data they can hold. Send some spy ships. No force recon, no insertion with force. Don’t do anything else until we know what we are dealing with.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.” The interaction between father and son had shifted to Admiral and Vice-Admiral. “Task force size?”

  “Odin, two battleships, three destroyers and support. If these aliens decide to come through, that should stop them.”

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as you are ready. Good sailing, Son.”

  * * * * *

  Two days later, Odin and its task force broke orbit from Olympia and powered towards the Bridgelen gate. A week later the task force exited the gate and vectored for the Dorogon gate. Eleven days after that it entered Dorogon space and took up orbit around Nyu-Nippon.

  “The force is in geosynchronous orbit over the capitol, Commander.”

  “Thank you, Captain Brewer. Have we been contacted by anyone in power?”

  After glancing at his coms operator and receiving a head shake, “No, sir.”

  “Please contact the Federacy Navel Headquarters and link me with the commandant. I’ll take it in my ready room.”

  The Vice Admiral, commander of the Odin task force, left the bridge, entered his ready room and prepared for the upcoming communiqué. Within minutes, his monitor chimed and Weiskoff saw an Asian man, dressed in action dress, staring back.