Frontiers 07 - The Expanse (36 page)

In the middle of the room stood Mister Percival’s custom, long-term stasis pod. Several panels had been removed, and a large section of its internal electronics had been pulled out while still connected in order to gain access to the various circuit boards.

“What is it you wanted to show me?” Nathan asked as he circled the stasis pod in search of Vladimir who was on the opposite side. He wore a special visor that was linked to the ship’s computer system in order to help him identify various components of the pod.

“Ah, Nathan,” Vladimir said. The special visor magnified his face from Nathan’s perspective, making his eyes appear enormous. Vladimir lifted the visor as he spoke. “I’ve finished my analysis of Mister Percival’s stasis pod. I must say, it was a very well-designed system. Very solidly constructed, which is not surprising considering its origin.” Vladimir tossed a small circuit board to Nathan.

Nathan caught the circuit board and examined it. “Aren’t these Cyrillic characters?” He looked at Vladimir, who smiled. “Let me guess; it was made in Russia?”

“Of course,” Vladimir said with a shrug.

“Is that what you dragged me down here to show me?”

“Nyet. I wanted to show you this.” Vladimir tossed another circuit board at him, this one even smaller.

“What’s this?”

“Can you read?”

Nathan looked at it again. “It says
LOGMEM00517A-CHRONO-B
.” Nathan looked at Vladimir. “So?”

“It is a memory board for use in the stasis pod’s log system. This one is specifically for keeping time records. It is the backup timelog memory chip from this pod.”

“And?”

“Why is it not in Russian like everything else in this pod?”

“Because the Russian one was broken, so they replaced it with one from a country that spoke English?” Nathan tossed the circuit board back to Vladimir. “Seriously, Vlad.”

“I checked the other pods, they were all made in the former United States, as was this memory board. I think someone replaced the previous memory board with this one. They probably pulled it from another pod, one that had been running for two hundred years.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t,” Vladimir admitted, “not positively. But there is one minute missing from the incremental log on this memory board. The missing minute occurred approximately eight hundred years ago.”

“So you think someone changed the board to make it look like the occupant of the pod had been in stasis for the entire trip, instead of since the time that the colonists died.”

Vladimir looked at Nathan with relief. “Finally.”

“So Mister Percival was lying about being in stasis the entire time?”

“Or he is not Mister Percival.” Vladimir picked up a data pad. “I was curious, so I borrowed this from Jessica.”

“What is it?” Nathan wondered.

“It’s the log from the Jasper colony,” Vladimir told him, “at least the portions that we were able to recover. It has several recordings of communications with the Jasper in the very early days of the colony, before the shuttle crash.” Vladimir played the recording and held it up for Nathan to see.

Nathan watched the split screen recording. On the left was an image of one of the colonists, presumably the man placing the call. A moment later, Mister Percival’s face appeared on the right side of the screen.

“Look familiar?” Vladimir asked.

“Mister Percival,” Nathan realized. “Then he was awake when they arrived.”

“But if you listen, they are not referring to him as Mister Percival.”

Nathan listened as Vladimir turned up the volume and restarted the comm-log entry. Nathan’s expression changed when he heard the colonist address the other man by his real name. “Captain Dubnyk?” Nathan said. “Percival is really Dubnyk?”

“Or Dubnyk was really Percival,” Vladimir said. “We really have no way of knowing at this point.”

“Who knows about this?”

“Other than you and I, only Mister Percival, or Captain Dubnyk, whoever he really is.”

“What about Jessica?”

“I haven’t told her yet.”

“I’ll tell her,” Nathan said, “and Cameron as well. But nobody else, not just yet. I need to think this through.”

“As you wish,” Vladimir promised.

“Nice work, by the way.”

“Of course,” Vladimir smiled.

* * *

“Mister Sheehan,” Nathan said as he stepped up to Loki’s bed. “Nice to have you back.”

“Thank you, sir.” Loki’s voice was raspy and weak. His body lay still with his arms at his sides, and he moved his head and mouth no more than was needed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like my body has been turned inside out.”

Nathan’s face cringed. “Doesn’t sound fun.”

“No, sir.” Loki’s head rolled slightly toward his left, his eyes straining to see his friend in the bed next to his. “Is Josh going to be okay?”

“Don’t you worry about Josh, Loki,” Marcus assured him. “He’ll be fine. Nine lives, that one has.”

“Are you feeling up to a few questions?” Nathan asked, trying as best he could not to pressure the young man.

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened?” Nathan asked, choosing to let Loki attempt to tell his story rather than bombarding him with direct questions. If necessary, such questions could come later.

“There was a fifth moon orbiting the fourth planet in 72 Herculis, the inhabited one. We didn’t see it when we were plotting our course before jumping in, and it wasn’t on the charts.” Loki swallowed hard, his mouth dry. “When we were about halfway to the planet, the fifth moon came out from behind. That’s when we saw it. It was small, more like a large asteroid than a moon, kind of irregularly shaped. At first, I thought it might be a captured one, like the Corinairans did—you know—to mine them in orbit. But we couldn’t use active scanners to get a good read on it.”

Nathan could see that Loki’s mouth was dry and asked one of the medical staff to bring water. “Why the burn?” he asked Loki.

“We were going to pass too close to that moon,” Loki answered. “We were afraid she was going to suck us in if we didn’t do a small burn.”

“Cold jets wouldn’t do it?”

“No, sir, not strong enough.” Loki took a few sips of water before continuing. “We tried to keep the burn low and short in the hopes that no one would notice, but as soon as we made the burn, we took fire: four missiles from the fifth moon we were passing by. There was a base of some sort down there. Josh pulled some fancy moves and evaded the missiles, but they launched fighters next, and we had to make a run for it.”

“Why didn’t you just jump?” Marcus asked.

“They’d see us,” Loki answered. “They’d know.”

Nathan nodded, showing Loki that they had made the right decision.

“Josh decided to try to run behind the planet. He figured we could jump away from the dark side. He tried to time it so those fighters would lose their line of sight on us so we could jump. We figured they’d think we went down to the surface. They launched more fighters from that base to try and cut us off coming around, but they didn’t know we were planning to just disappear on them.”

“So why didn’t you?” Nathan asked.

“We were just about to when more fighters came up from the planet surface right in front of us. Josh dove us straight down, nearly burnt us up passing through the atmosphere, but he managed to shave off enough speed so we could maneuver down low. We lost them in the canyons, even took a few out. Then we hit that waterfall…”

“Waterfall?” Marcus wondered.

“Just as we came around a bend in the canyon. It was just there, right in front of us. It was huge, spilling off the canyon wall on the left.”

“Why didn’t you maneuver around it?” Nathan asked.

“No chance. We were already swinging to port as we came around. Josh had no time. He barely managed to force the turbine nozzles to swing down before we went in. If he hadn’t, we’d be at the bottom of that river right now.”

“That kid and his crazy stunts…” Marcus complained.

“No, he did great, really. Two of the turbines got flooded and were quitting on us when we came out. He could barely keep us in the air. Ship wanted to flip over real bad. We needed to set down. Josh fired everything we had—missiles, drones, decoys—all into the valley ahead as a diversion.”

“A diversion?” Nathan wondered.

“A fake crash site. Then he stuffed us into a small cave up high in the canyon wall next to the waterfall.”

“How did he find it so quickly?”

“He saw it on the TFS as we came out of the falls, high on our port side. Problem was, it was kind of small. Couldn’t use our gear.”

“Is that when the canopy was damaged?”

“Probably, but it was cracked when we came out of the falls. The crash landing probably just finished the job.”

“How did you get airborne again?” Marcus wondered.

“Nothing was wrong with the turbines,” Loki explained. “They were just flooded with water. We just cleaned them out best we could, and they fired up.”

“So the fake crash site idea worked?” Nathan asked in disbelief.

“Sort of. I mean, it worked for a while, but they had fighters circling overhead, keeping an eye out. Garrett warned us that it was just a matter of time before they figured it out and started searching for us.”

“Wait a minute,” Nathan interrupted. “Who’s Garrett?”

“Leader of one of the resistance cells on the planet.”

Jessica had been standing back out of the way and listening to Loki’s account of the events, not wanting to intrude. Now, her interest was piqued. “Captain, if I may…”

Nathan stepped aside to allow Jessica closer to Loki.

“Hi, Loki. Tell me about Garrett,” Jessica persuaded.

“Big, scary looking, dirty. Beard, crazy hair and clothing, like he wanted to blend into the forest. They were all like that.”

“What kind of weapons were they using?”

“Projectile, like the ones you used before you ran out of ammunition. Said the Jung could track the energy weapons and locate them. That’s why they didn’t use them.”

“How did they find you?” Jessica asked.

“Said they used that cave as an observation post from time to time. They were going to watch the Jung activity around the crash site from there. They found us there by accident. We almost got into a shootout with them. Josh stared them down, gun to gun, got them to back away. Their leader got Josh to trust him enough to lower his weapon. Good thing, too. They created a diversion in the next valley and got those fighters to leave the area.”

“Why did they agree to help you?” Jessica wondered.

“Josh fed him a line about how we were part of a powerful alliance,” Loki explained, “that we were joining forces with the people of Earth to come save the core from the Jung. You know how Josh is.”

“And he believed him?” Nathan asked with surprise.

“The boy can be quite convincing,” Marcus said.

“He didn’t at first,” Loki said. “They believed the Earth was still infected. Garrett said it was off-limits, always had been.”

“That explains a lot,” Jessica mumbled.

“So they got rid of the fighters in the area,” Nathan said.

“Yes, sir. Then they took out the Jung at the crash site. Once they did, we got in the air, barely, and jumped out from within the canyon.”

“So they could see you?” Nathan asked.

“Yes, sir, the resistance, at least. Maybe a few people in the nearby towns and such as well. But the Jung were gone. As far as we know, they may still think we crashed in that valley. Garrett said they weren’t too bright, that they stole all their tech from others.”

Jessica’s eyebrows went up. She was obviously pleased with even that little bit of intelligence.

Nathan could tell that Jessica had a million more questions she wanted to ask, but he could also tell that Loki was tired and in discomfort. He remembered Cameron’s dislike for the way the nanites felt inside of her when they were making repairs to her tissues. He wondered if Loki was going through the same thing right now. “That’s enough for now, Loki,” he said, putting his hand on Jessica’s shoulder and stepping in front of her. “We figured out the rest from your flight recorder. You two did an amazing job.” Nathan put his hand on Loki’s shoulder. “Get some rest. We’ll talk more later.”

“Is Josh going to wake up soon?” Loki asked.

“He’s in worse shape than you, Loki,” Nathan admitted. “He was more exposed to the jump fields since he was sitting up front. The doctors are keeping him knocked out while the nanites work on his brain, so he doesn’t feel it.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“Count yourself lucky,” Marcus grumbled. “I’ve heard stories.”

“Get some rest,” Nathan insisted. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Loki said, closing his eyes.

Nathan stepped back from the bed and turned toward Jessica who had an anxious look on her face. He motioned to her to wait until they were out of the room.

“Captain,” she started in hushed tones, unable to contain herself, “if there is an organized resistance, then that means that the people that the Jung rule over are not willing subjects. In fact, it takes a lot of hate to stir up a resistance.”

“We only know of one man at this point,” Nathan argued.

“Loki said ‘they,’ Nathan,” Jessica pointed out as they entered the corridor. “
They
did this.
They
did that. And Loki used the term
cells
which implies a larger, more organized structure.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Nathan said. “But how does that help the Earth?”

“If nothing else, it means the Jung occupation of at least one world is opposed by some. If there is resistance, that means some of the Jung resources have to be dedicated to suppressing that resistance. That draws resources away from other campaigns…”

“Like the invasion of Earth,” Nathan surmised.

“Exactly. And if there is a resistance on one Jung world, it stands to reason that there might be others on other Jung worlds.”

Nathan knew she was right. Nearly every government entity in human history had met with some form of organized resistance, both violent and nonviolent.

“Captain, maybe we should think about putting an asset on the ground back there,” Jessica urged.

“Someone?” Nathan asked, knowing full well who that
someone
was.

“Well, that is what I trained for back at the academy.”

“Who’s going to keep my ship secure?”

“We’re four light years from home, Nathan. We’re safer now than we’ve ever been.”

“We don’t have the propellant.”

“Use the jump shuttle to drop me off. They can drop me in orbit on the night side and jump right out again. I’ve space-jumped before.”

“It’s still being used to test the ZPEDs with the jump drive. Besides, the answer would still be no.”

“Nathan…”

“Taking a few hours to recon Alpha Centauri on the way home is one thing. Sending an asset behind enemy lines is completely different.”