“Oh!” Ensign Latfee moaned. “You blew it, Kainan! That would have been fantastic!”
“How long?” an unfamiliar voice came over their comm-sets.
The sergeant jumped. “Oh, fuck!”
“You see!” Ensign Latfee exclaimed. “It could have been a hundred times better if you hadn’t opened your mouth.”
“Two minutes,” the lieutenant replied over the comms. He lowered his visor and activated the seal in order to pressurize his suit. “Close up, gentlemen.”
Sergeant Torwell rose from his seat and headed aft as he lowered his visor and activated the seal. He looked at the Ghatazhak lieutenant, who was smiling in the usual sinister fashion of the Ghatazhak. “Very funny, sir,” the sergeant responded as he took his seat at the forward end of the cargo deck.
“Ghatazhak!” Lieutenant Dorn beckoned. “Prepare to deploy.”
The remaining nine Ghatazhak soldiers, all clad in Ghatazhak space-jump suits opened their eyes, nearly in simultaneous fashion.
“You see,
that’s
creepy as well,” the sergeant exclaimed. “Maybe you guys could open your eyes one at a time or something.”
The sergeant was met with more sinister smiles from several of the Ghatazhak soldiers, as well as a look of casual disapproval from Lieutenant Dorn.
“Just a thought,” the sergeant replied as he swung the control console out from the side and in front of him. “Starting depress cycle.”
“Minute thirty,” the copilot called out over the comms.
“Decreasing cargo bay gravity to fifty percent,” the sergeant added. “Releasing clamps and umbilicals.”
The Ghatazhak rose carefully from their seats as the clamps holding them in place disengaged from the mooring points on their jump rigs, then they turned aft.
“Depress complete,” the sergeant reported. “Deploying cargo ramp.”
The top edge of the aft bulkhead parted from the ceiling of the shuttle, and began to swing outward, pivoting on its deck-level hinges, slowly revealing the starry blackness of space behind them.
“One minute,” the copilot announced as the cargo ramp leveled off.
“Ramp gravity is at twenty-five percent, gentlemen,” the sergeant announced, “so tread carefully.”
The Ghatazhak did not respond as they slowly lumbered out the open aft end of the cargo shuttle. As they stepped out onto the bulkhead that was now a ramp extending into open space, they felt themselves, and the massive jump rigs they carried, become lighter. The moved slowly out onto the ramp in two lines, then, once in position, they turned to face forward.
“I trust you have us facing in the correct direction,” Lieutenant Dorn said as he turned to face forward.
“Pitched up to the correct attitude more than an hour ago,” the copilot replied. “Thirty seconds to deployment point.”
“Final checks,” the lieutenant instructed his men.
“Ten, good.”
“Nine, good.”
“Eight, good.”
The Ghatazhak continued to count off, one by one, until all nine of the lieutenant’s men had reported ready for deployment.
“One, good,” the lieutenant said, ending the count off. “Ready for deployment.”
“Ten seconds,” Ensign Latfee reported. “Stand by to disengage ramp gravity. Stand by to translate down relative.”
“Standing by,” the pilot replied.
“Deploy in three……two……one……”
“Ramp gravity off,” the sergeant announced.
Lieutenant Dorn felt his body become even lighter as the ramp’s gravity disappeared.
“Translating down relative,” the pilot reported.
The lieutenant watched the open aft end of the cargo shuttle in which they had spent the last fifteen hours slowly move downward and away from them. He could feel his feet lose contact with the cargo shuttle’s loading ramp, as it moved away from them. “Positive separation,” he confirmed over the comms.
“One meter separation and increasing,” the copilot reported.
Sergeant Torwell watched as the legs of the ten Ghatazhak soldiers rose upward, finally disappearing from view. “Jumpers are clear,” he announced. “Closing up.”
Lieutenant Dorn looked downward as the shuttle’s large aft cargo ramp began to swing upward again. Being the forward-most element in the formation of free-floating Ghatazhak meant that if the ramp would clear him, it would clear them all.
“
Two meters separation,
” the copilot reported.
The lieutenant watched the ramp swing closed, once again sealing off the aft end of the cargo shuttle. “We are clear.”
“
Changing course,
” the copilot announced. “
Turning to departure heading. Three meters separation.”
The lieutenant watched as the cargo shuttle fired its maneuvering thrusters, yawing to port and pitching down and away from the Ghatazhak. A moment later, it fired its four main thrusters at very low power and began to pull away from the formation of Ghatazhak, heading for one of the nearby moons of Weldon.
The lieutenant angled his head upward, looking at the distant planet ahead of them. At their current speed, it would take them nearly five Takaran days to reach their target and begin their descent to the surface. It would be the longest low-metabolic state sleep he and his men had ever attempted, and it would take them right to the limits of their life-support systems. Unfortunately, it could not be helped. Had they allowed the shuttle to move any closer, the likelihood of being detected by the Jung forces in orbit over Weldon would increase dramatically. As it was, they had to time their transition precisely to remain far away from the ships orbiting above the planet, in order to increase their chances of reaching the surface undetected. If any of those ships were to change orbit, if a new ship was to arrive at an inopportune time, or if one of those ships happened to notice a small, man-made metallic object coasting past them a few hundred kilometers away, the mission would be over.
“
Seven meters separation,
” the shuttle’s copilot reported as the shuttle continued its low-power burn to alter its course to take it around the far side of the nearby moon. “
We’ll be beyond local comms range in ten seconds, Lieutenant.
”
“Understood.”
“
Good luck, sir,
” Ensign Latfee said, his voice becoming faint and garbled as the shuttle continued to move away from them.
The lieutenant did not respond, knowing that the shuttle was already beyond the range limits of their local comms. He glanced at the data display on the inside of his visor. Their trajectory and speed was perfect, and the countdown timer to the next way point was running. “Gentlemen, time to go back to sleep.”
Sergeant Torwell returned to his jump seat at the back of the flight deck and swung up his faceplate. “I still can’t believe those guys are going to float out there for five days.” The sergeant removed his helmet. “Are they really going to zombie-sleep the entire time?”
“How the hell did you even find such books?” Lieutenant Kainan wondered. “There have got to be millions of titles from the last Terran century alone, and from all of them, you chose zombies?”
“Josh turned me onto them.”
“Figures,” Ensign Latfee said.
“And why would you listen to Cadet Hayes?” the lieutenant wondered. “The kid’s an idiot.”
“He’s one hell of a pilot, though,” Ensign Latfee defended.
“Being a great pilot doesn’t mean he’s not an idiot,” the lieutenant insisted.
“I don’t know,” the sergeant said. “He seems pretty smart to me. He’s well read, that’s for sure.”
“It’s only because he has so much cold-coast time under his belt,” the lieutenant insisted.
“One minute to orbit,” Ensign Latfee reported.
“Perhaps you should be taking your reading recommendations from Cadet Sheehan,” the lieutenant suggested. “He appears to be the brains of that team.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” the sergeant said. “He reads mostly tech manuals. At least they would put me to sleep. Then I wouldn’t have to stare at those damned zombie Ghatazhak the whole time.”
“We’re on orbital intercept trajectory for Markus,” Ensign Latfee announced.
“Very well,” the lieutenant replied. “We should be on the far side in about seven hours. Then we can power up and jump home.”
“I can’t wait,” the sergeant exclaimed with a sigh of relief. “Being this close to the Jung just does not sit right with me.”
“It doesn’t sit right with any of us, Sergeant,” the lieutenant agreed. “But someone has to do it.”
“Just do me a favor, sir, and don’t volunteer us next time. Give someone else a chance, will you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What makes you so sure no one will come home?” Naralena asked in a whisper as they moved along the back side of the small home.
“We’ve been watching this house for hours,” Jessica explained, “ever since sunrise. Hell, we’ve been watching all of the homes around here. Only one person left for work, and no one came home from work the entire morning. It’s early afternoon already,” she continued, pointing at the sun’s position in the Koharan sky. “I’m pretty sure that most of these are vacation homes.”
“What are vacation homes?” Naralena wondered.
“Small homes outside of big cities, usually someplace quiet and relaxing. People go there on the weekends to get away from the city.”
“You people have more than one home?” Naralena was shocked at the luxury.
“Not everyone,” Jessica replied as she stepped up on the back porch of the home. “My family didn’t. Of course, we lived in an area where most people
wanted
to have a vacation home, so…” Jessica lifted her jacket’s waistband and pulled a small, Takaran energy pistol out of her belt.
“I thought you said no one would be home?” Naralena wondered, noticing the weapon.
“Telles taught me a trick,” she replied as she manipulated the controls on the weapon. “If you put this thing on a super-low power setting, you can use it to discharge a small amount of superheated plasma. The Ghatazhak use something similar to start campfires in the field.”
“You’re going to burn the door down?”
“No,” Jessica replied, shaking her head in dismay. “I’m going to try and melt a hole in the glass so that I can open the door.”
“Sorry,” Naralena said, noticing Jessica’s reaction. “I don’t have much experience in special operations.”
Jessica placed the tip of the weapon’s barrel against the window glass just above the doorknob and pressed the trigger. The pistol began to emit a barely audible whine as a red-hot circle appeared in the glass around the tip of its barrel. Jessica instinctively pulled the weapon away as she released the trigger, feeling the intense heat from the melting glass. “Damn, that
is
hot,” she said. The glowing red circle gradually faded away, revealing a ten centimeter hole in the glass, with still-molten glass cooling and congealing around the edge. “It worked,” she declared as she positioned the weapon for a second shot. A moment later, the ten centimeter circle had become an oval, and after a third shot, it was more than big enough for Jessica to stick her hand through without getting burned by the still-hot edges.
“What if there is an alarm?”
“Does this place look like the kind of home that would have an alarm?”
Naralena looked at the dilapidated structure and the unkempt yard. “I guess not.”
“There is only one way to find out,” Jessica said as she reached down the inside of the door and unlocked it. She carefully withdrew her hand, then turned the knob and pulled the door open slowly, pausing after it was open about twenty centimeters to see if an alarm went off. She looked at Naralena for several seconds. “Nothing. No alarm.” She pulled the door all the way opened and slipped inside. “Come on,” she instructed, ushering Naralena inside and closing the door again behind her.
Jessica reached up and pulled down the shade over the window she had just burned a hole in and then stood upright again. “First we do a quick search to make sure no one is home,” she whispered.
“What do we do if we find someone?” Naralena asked, her eyes widening and a look of uncertainty on her face.
“Subdue and detain.”
Naralena’s eyes became even wider. “Of course,” she whispered following Jessica into the next room.
They entered the living room of the home and moved quietly across to the small hallway on the other side of the room. Jessica could see out the small, eye-level window in the front door to the street outside as they passed, noting that there was still no traffic going by.
Jessica moved down the hallway, her small energy pistol still in her right hand. She stopped at an open doorway to her left and peeked inside. It was a small bedroom, with a single bed, a dresser, and a small desk. It appeared to be a child’s room, and it was unoccupied.
Inspections of the next two bedrooms revealed similar results. Beds, dressers, chairs, wardrobes… but no people.
“It looks like no one is home,” Jessica announced. “And judging by the temperature in here, they haven’t been here within the last day or two.”
A look of relief washed across Naralena’s face. “What do we do now?”
“You start going through the master bedroom. Look for anything that might be of use to us. Clothing, whatever kind of currency or payment devices they might use. Portable comm devices, wireless phones, computing devices.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I saw something in the living room that looked like a computer terminal. Intel says this world has a global public network, so I’m going to see if we can access it.”
* * *
Abby sat at her desk, studying the most recent expansion proposals for Terran settlement on Tanna. Although she often thought about her days on the Aurora, as well as the years she had spent with her father developing the jump drive, she was happy to have a normal life once again. As mundane as her job might seem, it did allow her to keep regular, predictable hours, and it even provided a degree of flexibility as well. The lack of mental stimulation was a small price to pay for the ability to be with her family, to share meals with them, and kiss them goodnight… every night. It was a luxury that had all too often been sacrificed during the decade-long development project. Even worse had been the fact that, as a result of that decade of sacrifice, she had been separated from her family for nearly a year. However, that was all in the past. Now, she was where she wanted to be, living the life that she had so desperately missed all those years, and with each and every moment, she tried her best to make up for all the lost time. Never again would she return to that life. Never again would she put her family second… Not for anything.
Or so she thought.
“Abby?” a familiar voice called from her office doorway.
A chill ran down Abby’s spine as she recognized the voice. She hesitated for a moment, then looked up from her desk. Standing in the doorway, wearing clothing befitting the average Terran immigrant, was Captain Nathan Scott. “Oh, my God,” she gasped softly.
“May I?” Nathan asked.
Abby stumbled for words for a brief moment. “Of course.”
Nathan stepped into her office, closing the door gently behind him, as if trying not to attract attention. “You look great,” he said, flashing his usual charming smile that automatically engendered trust in him by anyone who was greeted with it. “Your new life must be agreeing with you.”
“Uh… It has… I mean, it does,” Abby replied, fumbling for words. “I’m surprised to see you, Captain…”
“I’m not a captain today,” he replied, pulling at the lapel of his overcoat. “Just Nathan. I’m traveling incognito.”
Abby chuckled at the thought as she rose to greet him. “How did you get in here?” she wondered as she came out from behind her desk and gave him a hug. “Usually, the receptionist warns me if someone is coming back to see me.”
“I told her I was your cousin and that I just arrived from Earth and wanted to surprise you. I guess security is not that tight around here.”
“Not really, no,” she confirmed as she returned to her seat behind her desk. “Please,” she said, pointing to the chair on his side of the desk. She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts, which were racing at the moment. “Forgive me, Nathan, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you. Honestly, I am quite happy to see you, but I’m also afraid to ask what brought you here.”
“A jump shuttle, actually. Josh and Loki flew me over. They’re back at the spaceport.”
Abby smiled. “You know what I mean.”
“Hey, can’t a guy visit an old friend?”
“In the middle of a war?”
“Yeah, Cameron said you wouldn’t buy that,” Nathan replied. “She says ‘hello’, by the way.”
“How is she?”
“Good,” Nathan answered. “The Celestia is in dry dock now. She got beaten up pretty badly. She’ll probably be in there for a few months, at least.”
“And Jessica?”
“She’s on a mission,” Nathan told her. “I can’t say where. Classified, and all that. Left a couple of days ago.”
“I see. Well, it is good to know that everyone is alright,” Abby said.
“You didn’t ask about Vlad,” Nathan wondered.
Abby laughed. “No, I didn’t.”
Nathan also laughed. “He’s also fine, busy fixing up the ship, as usual.”
“So, why did you come, Nathan?” Abby asked.
“Well, since you didn’t buy the ‘came to visit a friend’ bit, I’ll get straight to the point. We’ve struck up an agreement with the Tannans to build a production facility on their world.”
“What kind of production facility?” Abby asked, suspicion in her tone.
“Fast-attack ships,” he explained, “based on the old Scout-class designs.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Abby asked. “I have no expertise in such matters.”
“They are going to be jump-capable, Abby.”
“You don’t need me for that,” she insisted. “Surely by now the Corinairans are as good with jump tech as we are. The Takarans are probably even better.”
“Perhaps,” Nathan agreed. “Montgomery was certainly an innovative thinker, but we don’t necessarily want that type of thinking. Montgomery was a greater risk taker, much like the second STS team that built the Celestia’s drive. You and your father were more meticulous, more careful.”
“You would think that in times like these you would want your research and development people to take risks,” Abby said.
“Yes and no. In this case, we need those jump drives to be capable and reliable. We don’t want to push the envelope. Reliability, precision, ease of operation, and ease of maintenance. That’s what Admiral Dumar wants from the fast-attack ships.”
“Why base them on the Scout ship design?” Abby wondered. “Isn’t that a thirty year-old design?”
“Yes, but that’s what makes them so attractive. The infrastructure required to build them is far less advanced than that required to build something like the Aurora.”
“But aren’t they small, and less powerful?”
“Yes, but they are also far easier to build, and take far less time. In the time it would take to build a single Explorer-class ship, we could build more than a hundred fast-attack ships. Besides, we’ve already outfitted the last three surviving Scout-class ships with jump drives and plasma cannons. They’ve been taking frigates one on one, and winning. A pack of half a dozen could probably take down a cruiser. Not to mention the fact that with the short-range, rapid-jump systems, they can travel farther and faster than an Explorer-class ship. Hell, that’s why I took a shuttle here. It would have taken the Aurora over thirty hours to get here.”
Abby shook her head. “I still don’t see why you need
me
involved in this project, Nathan.”
“Nobody knows the jump drive better than you do, Abby,” Nathan insisted. “Oh, the Takaran scientists may have more complete theories on what actually happens when you jump, but they don’t understand the technology itself. Not like you do.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Abby disagreed. She looked at Nathan. “There’s something else, something you’re not telling me.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair. “I had a feeling you were going to call me on this one as well.” He frowned. “You’re worse than my sister.”
Abby just continued looking at him, waiting.
“It’s a matter of trust,” Nathan began, “or rather, who to trust. You see, we have reason to believe that we have at least one, or more, spies in our ranks.”
“How do you know?”
“We don’t, not really,” Nathan admitted. “During the last attack on Sol, when the Karuzara rammed the Jung battle platform, their boarding parties went straight for the Falcon bays. Not the regular ones, the ones that were jump-capable. They almost got away with one. If it hadn’t been for Josh and Loki chasing them down, micro-jumping across the system, they would have.” Nathan shifted in his chair, looking Abby in the eyes more intently. “Long ago, you told me that unless the jump emitter array was powered up and nearly ready to discharge, the presence of a jump drive wouldn’t be detectable.”
“That’s correct.”
“Then someone had to have sent a message to the battle platform, in the middle of battle, perhaps only minutes before impact, about those jump-capable Falcons and where they could be found.”
“So you’re here because…”
“We can’t trust anyone else,” Nathan explained. “We’ve only got a handful of scientists with us who know enough about the jump drive to be able to sell us out to the Jung, and we’ve had to take steps to isolate them. We’ve even stopped fabricating mini-jump drives, and have sent the technicians involved in their production back to the Pentaurus cluster for now. We simply can’t take any chances.”
“Couldn’t they sell their knowledge to the Jung from the Pentaurus cluster?” Abby wondered.
“Yes, but nowhere near as easily. We want to isolate the production of jump drives to this world.”
“How is that any better?” Abby asked. “There are millions of people on this planet as well. The Jung were here for something like ten or twenty years, I think. Surely they have spies here as well?”
“Possibly, yes,” Nathan agreed. “But we weren’t planning on building them
on
Tanna. We were going to build them on the asteroid base. There’s plenty of room in the old Jung fighter base.”
“But there is no orbital assembly platform here,” Abby reminded him, “and I doubt there’s enough room on the little asteroid to build them there.”
“We don’t need an OAP,” Nathan explained. “We build fast-attack ships here, on the surface.”
“And, how do you plan on getting them to orbit?”
“That won’t be a problem, thanks to you and your father,” Nathan said, grinning. “We build them on dollies, sitting on tracks. Once they’re done, we roll them out the door and down a hill, letting them pick up just enough speed to get far enough up the incline at the other end, and then jump them to high orbit. Once in orbit, they light their mains and accelerate to maintain orbit.”