Frontiers 07 - The Expanse (25 page)

“You’re early,” Nathan commented, noting the shipboard time.

“Always,” she answered, noticing the worried look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just hate jumping away without everyone on board.”

“We’ve done it before.”

“The battle of Takara?” Nathan asked. “That was different, and you know it.”

“They’ll be fine. They know where to meet us. It’s not like they’ve never flown around deep space in that thing by themselves before.”

“Yeah, but that was back in the Pentaurus cluster. That was familiar space to them. This is not. They can’t even ID contacts out here.”

“They have our charts for the core and all the same ships in their database that we have.”

“We both know that the more times we jump without them, the less the chances are they’ll successfully find us again.”

“Captain, they could jump all the way back to Earth even faster than we could,” Cameron reminded him.

“Through a sector full of Jung warships.”

“Spread light years apart,” she added. “You worry too much. You do realize that the two of them have more stick time than either of us. They even have combat stick time.”

Nathan looked at Cameron, a little shocked by her defense of Josh’s piloting skills. “That’s Josh you’re talking about, remember?”

“I still have my reservations about him flying this ship, but he is the perfect pilot for the Falcon. That much I will admit.” Cameron looked at Nathan. “To you, not to him,” she warned.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Thirty seconds to jump,” Mister Riley reported.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to jump around the stars in a ship like that? No crew to worry about, no responsibilities, just jumping about to whatever systems you felt like visiting.”

“Seems like a boring existence,” Cameron said. “Not to mention dangerous.”

“Perhaps, but it’s still an interesting thought.”

“You’re over-romanticizing it, sir.”

“So you’re telling me that you wouldn’t want to do it?”

“No, I’m telling you it probably wouldn’t be as much fun as you think.”

“Really?”

“Look at that screen.” She pointed to the view screen. “It’s black, with a lot of little white dots. Most of those dots are galaxies, all of which are far too distant to explore. Of those that are stars, only ten percent of them have worlds orbiting them that are even remotely habitable, let alone hospitable. And as far as we know, only a couple hundred or so have been colonized. That makes for fairly bleak prospects as far as excitement and adventure go.”

“Executing jump sixty-one in three……”

“Well, when you put it that way…” Nathan said.

“Two……”

“Like I said, you’re over-romanticizing it.”

“One……”

“Perhaps.”

“Jump.”

The bridge filled momentarily with the blue-white flash of the Aurora’s jump drive as they instantly moved another ten light years closer to Earth.

“Jump sixty-one complete,” Mister Riley reported.

“Verifying position,” Mister Navashee announced.

“I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic at heart,” Nathan admitted. “Isn’t everyone?”

Cameron slowly turned her head toward Nathan, cocking her head down slightly and casting a questionable gaze his way. “Seriously?”

“Position verified,” Mister Navashee reported. “We are now thirty-seven light years from Sol.”

“Beginning layover sixty-two,” Mister Riley reported. “Time to next jump: seven hours, eighteen minutes.”

Nathan rose from his chair. “Very well, Commander, you have the bridge.”

* * *

“Okay, this is just plain creepy,” Josh declared as he watched the small, irregularly shaped moon pass on their starboard side. “Not only is that thing all shadowy and scary looking, but it’s coming right at us.”

“That’s why we have to do a burn, Josh,” Loki reminded him from his seat in the rear of the Falcon’s cockpit, “to get out of its way.”

“How long of a burn?”

“Fifteen seconds at ten percent on the mains is all we need.”

“During which any half-assed sensor, telescope, or thermal goggles looking up at that moon will see us and go, ‘Whoa, what the fuck is that?’”

“Probably, but even if they launched interceptors from the planet the moment they saw our engines light up, we’d still be able to whip around the moon and jump away on her far side long before they reached us.”

“It just occurred to me, Loki; this is exactly what we are
not
supposed to do during a coast-through recon flight.”

“That just occurred to you, did it?”

“Actually, it occurred to me a long time ago,” Josh said. “I was just reminding myself.”

“Twenty seconds to burn,” Loki reported.

“Spinning up the reactors,” Josh answered.

“Don’t worry, Josh; in ten minutes, we’ll be on the far side of that moon, jumping away to safety.”

“That easy, huh?” Josh said. “Hey, since when are you Mister Calm?”

“Trust me; I’m not. This is just my new, more confident exterior,” Loki told him. “What do you think?”

“I liked you better when you freaked out.”

“Ten seconds.”

“Reactors online and running at twenty percent. Spinning up the mains.” Josh watched his systems display as the interceptor’s main drive came to life. He looked outside again at the hunk of rock they were calling a moon as it moved closer to them with each passing second. “Yup, creepy.”

“Five seconds.”

“Mains armed,” Josh reported. “Throttles at ten percent.”

“Three……two……one……burn,” Loki ordered.

Josh pressed the ignition button. The interceptor’s main engines instantly came to life at a low rumble. Even though they were only at ten percent of their maximum output, without the inertial dampeners online, the sudden application of forward thrust pushed them back in their seats rather forcefully.

“Jeez!” Josh declared. “Maybe we should have brought the inertial dampeners online first.” He felt as if someone rather large were sitting on his chest, making it difficult to breath. He remembered the times as a child when Marcus, who couldn’t stand to smack a child, would simply sit on him until he agreed to behave.

“Too much energy use,” Loki answered as he, too, struggled to breathe. “Makes us even easier to track.”

“It would be worth it.”

“Five seconds to shutdown,” Loki reported.

Josh struggled to get his finger back in position to kill the burn. “Ready.”

“Three……two……one……shutdown!”

Josh pressed the button, and the mains instantly silenced, releasing them from the crushing force of acceleration. “Mains are off,” he reported. He pulled the throttles back to zero. “Throttles at zero. Taking reactors off…”

“We’re being scanned!” Loki announced, the panic beginning to sneak back into his voice. “Active radar!”

“From where?” Josh asked, his finger backing away from the reactor control panel.

“The fifth moon!” Loki answered.

“What?”

“The fifth moon! There’s a base down there!”

“Why didn’t we see any…”

“Missile lock!”

“I’m bringing the reactors to full power!” Josh announced. “Bring the inertial dampeners online fast, or we’re gonna be piles of goo in our flight seats!”

“I can’t until the reactors reach at least eighty percent, or we’ll lose power to flight systems!”

“They’re at forty!”

“Contacts!” Loki reported. “Four missiles inbound from the moon! Impact in twenty seconds!”

Josh quickly backed the reactors back down to one percent and shut off the mains completely. “Going cold! Pop decoys!”

A dozen small decoys shot out of the back of the Falcon and began emitting both thermal and radar signatures that approximated that of the Falcon. At the same time, Josh used the cold maneuvering jets to spin the Falcon around, flinging the decoys out around them. “Translating down!” Josh announced as he again used the cold jets to push the Falcon down and away from the spread of decoys.

“Ten seconds!”

“Come on,” Josh mumbled as he continued to apply cold thrust to push them down and away from the decoys.

“Josh, you’re going to use up the cold jets if you keep…”

“We need some distance from those decoys!”

“Five seconds!” Loki reported.

Josh watched the propellant level indicators for the cold jet maneuvering system the Corinairan engineers had installed before they had started recon flights of the Takaran system back in the Pentaurus cluster. Loki was right, it was dropping rapidly. Either way, in a few seconds, it wouldn’t matter.

The cockpit lit up as all four missiles struck the decoys above them and exploded in rapid succession.

“Bringing the reactors back to full power!” Josh announced, skipping his usual celebratory cry. “Spinning the mains back up. As soon as the reactors are at eighty percent, start up the inertial dampeners! I need to be free to maneuver!”

“Got it!” Loki answered. “More contacts, slower ones, coming from the fifth moon again! Count four!”

“More missiles?” Josh wondered. He looked at the reactor panel. The Falcon’s twin fusion reactors were only up to forty percent. He also didn’t have enough cold jet propellant to pull the same trick a second time.

“Negative, they’re maneuvering, moving into attack position.” Loki swallowed hard. “They’re fighters, Josh.”

“ETA?”

“Forty seconds.”

Josh looked at the reactor panel. “We’re up to sixty. We’ll be flying at full throttle before then.”

“They’re accelerating pretty quickly, Josh,” Loki said, tension in his voice.

“That’s okay; so can we.” Josh was tuned in mentally, ready for the game. He had spent all his childhood playing in flight sims and everything after that bouncing around the rings of Haven in that old harvester. He knew how to fly. He also knew that, while he might be able to out-fly the enemy pilots, he couldn’t out-fight them. Tug had taught him that. Tug had also taught him that no game could simulate real combat. Although he and Loki had been under fire and had returned fire, they had never engaged in a real dogfight. Josh was cocky and arrogant, but he wasn’t stupid.

“Eighty percent!” Loki reported. “Spinning up the inertial dampeners.”

Josh watched as the reactor’s power levels continued to climb toward one hundred percent. He knew it would take a few seconds for the inertial dampening systems to spin up and balance before they would be effective. If he fired his flight systems—especially his main drive—too soon, he risked crashing the inertial dampeners before they stabilized. That would require a restart which would not complete before the incoming fighters were in attack range.

As much as he hated math, Josh was amazed at how many numbers flew through his head during such situations. Attack angles, turn rates, electrical energy loads, thrust levels, and acceleration curves; it was like his head was doing the math at a subconscious level. As he lit his main engines, it was as if he could sense the additional energy load the act placed on the reactors. He could even anticipate the millisecond lag between the movement of his throttles and the reaction of his engines.

“Inertial dampeners online!” Loki announced as Josh started easing the throttle forward. “Twenty seconds to intercept!”

“Mains coming up!” Josh announced. He glanced at the reactor control panel as the indicators reached one hundred percent. “We’re outta here!” he declared as he slammed the throttles forward against their stops.

With the inertial dampeners now online, only enough force for the crew to feel their maneuvers was allowed to translate into the cockpit of the Falcon. “Bringing forward turret online.”

“Why?” Josh wondered. “We’re not going to be able to hit anything, not at this distance.”

“Gives them something to think about,” Loki argued. “Maybe it will keep them from coming to close.”

“Doubtful.” Josh looked at their trajectory around the moon. “Uh, Loki, this ain’t gonna work.”

“What’s not gonna work?”

“The angles. We’re never gonna get that moon between us and them.”

“So?”

“Captain said not to jump if someone can see us!”

“Fuck, I almost forgot.” Loki suddenly felt himself being pushed right as Josh rolled the ship to port and started a hard turn. “Where are you going?”

“Toward the planet,” Josh answered. “I think I can put just enough distance between us and them that we can pull a hard turn around the planet and jump away when they can’t see us.”

“At this speed?”

“No, at a lot faster than this speed!”

“Are you insane?”

“Pretty much,” Josh said with a chuckle.

“Josh, that’s not physically possible, not even at half our current speed. Orbital velocity is…”

“I’m not trying to go into fucking orbit, Loki! I just want to put the planet between us and them. I never said it was gonna be pretty!”

“Okay! Okay! But let me run the numbers first. Maybe we don’t have to go at full power all the way around!”

“Fine!”

Loki studied his console as he ran the numbers over and over, each time adjusting the speed of both the Falcon and its pursuers. A warning light began to flash, pulling his attention away from his calculations momentarily. “Shit. Four more contacts coming from the moon. No doubt more fighters. They’re moving into formation and accelerating faster than the first four.”

“What? How many fighters do they need to shoot down one recon ship?”

“The first four were probably the ready flight,” Loki surmised.

“The what?”

“The ready flight. Major Prechitt always keeps four fighters in the tubes with pilots in their cockpits ready to launch at a moment’s notice.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been tracking flight ops during our jump layovers,” Loki told him. “That’s odd. The first four fighters haven’t changed their rate of acceleration. In fact, they’re matching our speed, accelerating as we accelerate.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Back off on the throttles, Josh.”

“Why?”

“I think I know what they’re doing.”

“How much?” Josh asked as he put his left hand on the pair of throttles.

“Try taking it down ten percent.”

“Got it.”

Loki watched as the Falcon slowed her acceleration. “They’re slowing down as well.”

“What about the second flight?”

“They’re still accelerating, but they’re not even at half the other flight’s speed yet. They’re going to try and catch us as we come around the planet,” Loki explained, “from the opposite side.”

“How did you figure that out?”

“The CAG had our fighters practicing the same maneuver a few jumps ago,” Loki told him, “only they were using the Aurora as the planet.”

“I’ve got to stop reading so much,” Josh said.

“Is it just me, or does this conversation seem backwards?”