Frontiers 07 - The Expanse (28 page)

“We’re losing power on turbine four!” Loki warned.

“Just keep her running for ten more seconds,” he begged. He fired the aft thrusters, sending them hurtling forward toward the cave. He added some upward thrust to compensate for the failing number four turbine.

“We’re too high!” Loki said.

Josh ignored his warnings.

“We just lost four!” Loki’s eyes widened as they began to fall from the sky as the overhang above the cave rushed toward them. He crossed his arms across his face to protect himself as Josh spun the interceptor one hundred eighty degrees. It slid below the overhang and into the cave, crashing into the cave floor. The ship bounced up slightly, its highest point striking the cave ceiling and breaking off large chunks of the reddish-purple rock that then rained down upon their ship. The ship slid several meters across the slippery cave floor, slamming into the back wall. Josh felt his head slam back against the inside of his helmet. The canopy shattered from the force of the impact, sending chunks of the clear canopy flying.

“Loki!” Josh yelled once the ship came to a stop. “Loki! Are you all right?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I think,” Loki answered. “Fuck, Josh. Where did you learn to fly?”

“Self-taught, remember?”

“It fucking shows.”

“Hey, we’re alive!” he said. “Shut everything down, quickly! That other fighter will be flying over any second. We can’t be hot!”

“We just flew through a waterfall a minute ago, Josh. How hot can we be?”

“Yeah, that worked out kind of nice, didn’t it?” Josh looked at the canopy. The frame was jammed up against the ceiling of the cave. If the canopy itself had not shattered, they never would have been able to get out. “Jesus! The canopy is broken.” He checked his helmet and suit, all of which appeared to be okay. “How’s your suit, Loki?”

“Fine, never better.”

“How are we looking back there?”

“I have no idea, Josh. I just shut everything down, remember?”

“Just tell me the self-destruct system still works.”

“It’s battery-powered. So yeah, it still works,” Loki answered. “But can we get out first, before you blow it up?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nathan remembered how much he always dreaded going to medical. The cries of pain, the moans of those suffering bravely, the smell of open wounds and the ozone fields used to sterilize them. The worst was the sound of suction devices. The slurping made his stomach twist, threatening to reject its contents with only a moment’s notice. The mandatory ‘captain’s rounds’ as he had named them included going from bed to bed, offering the wounded words of encouragement from their de facto leader.

Despite the fact that he had been serving as captain for several months now, he still didn’t feel like the true captain of the Aurora. In his mind, that would always be the late Captain Roberts. Some days were better than others, and he seemed to be able to perform his duties with at least enough skill to keep his XO from relieving him under some article or another.

Soon, however, the long performance would come to an end. They would dock the ship at the Orbital Assembly Platform in Earth orbit, and Fleet personnel would swarm all over the ship, relieving everyone and going through every nut, bolt, weld, and circuit. The Corinairan and Takaran specialists would be busy explaining the enhancements they had made, and no doubt those new technologies would keep the scientists on Earth excited for some time to come. That would make his non-Terran crew a bit of a commodity, which would probably make their extended stay on Earth a bit more pleasant. Still, he worried how long that stay might be. Those men had signed on to serve on the Aurora, not to sit on Earth and cool their heels, and especially not to wait out a war. However, try as he might, he could not envision a scenario in which Fleet could spare a ship, let alone a jump ship, to spend a month on a round trip to the Pentaurus cluster and back. Until the Aurora was inadvertently thrown across the galaxy, no one from his Earth had traveled more than twenty light years from home, at least not since the plague had struck a thousand years ago.

Nathan tried to tell himself that it did not matter. He had never promised anything more than he could deliver. He had only promised that he would do everything within his power to protect his crew and get them home again. Once they got back to Earth, that promise would have been fulfilled for just over ten percent of his crew.

Oddly enough, Nathan found himself hoping that his father had actually won his bid for the North American presidency. That might give him enough clout to get his non-Terran crew home sooner rather than later. At the very least, they might be given the resources to fabricate their own jump ship in order to get home. After all, a small production base with a single fabricator parked on a big enough asteroid might be all they needed—that, and enough consumables to keep them alive long enough to complete their task. And there were four fabricators on the Aurora.
Or were there three?
Nathan laughed to himself.

At least, now, medical was a different story. It was clean, quiet, and actually smelled pleasant. The Corinairan physicians—who were adamant about the effects of certain environmental factors when it came to healing—kept the place as relaxing as possible. They had even installed sound-dampening systems around each bed, allowing them to block out all exterior noise in order to keep the patient in a peaceful state. They had wanted to install a complex system that would create a holographic curtain around each bed. This would have allowed them to not only surround each patient with whatever peaceful setting they desired, but also to provide patient privacy. However, it would have required extensive reconstruction of the entire treatment area, hence it was given an extremely low priority.

Nathan made his way through the mostly empty treatment room. There were only two patients, both of whom were sleeping at the moment. His daily reports had told him of their conditions. One was being treated for a minor burn that occurred during the installation of one of the plasma cannons into a torpedo tube. The other inhaled some rather corrosive gas that had accidentally vented from one of the fighters in the hangar deck. He would be in for at least a week while nanites repaired damaged tissues in his lungs.

“Doctor Chen,” Nathan called as he came to stand in the doorway to her office.

“Captain, how may I help you?”

Nathan entered her office and took a seat across from her. “I was wondering how Mister Percival was doing.”

“Quite well considering how long he was in stasis. The nanites have done a remarkable job of repairing his atrophied tissues.”

“How strong is he?”

“Well, he managed to handle an entire day of touring the ship. Although, he is resting in his quarters now as a result.”

“I meant, how strong is he emotionally?”

Doctor Chen shrugged her shoulders. “Hard to say. He seems fairly unaffected by what has happened. I mean, the collapse of humanity in the core didn’t seem to affect him that much.”

“But he knew that was coming before he went into stasis,” Nathan reminded her.

“True enough, but he also took the death of the expedition pretty well. At least, I see no signs of depression or mourning on his part. No more than expected, anyway.” Doctor Chen looked quizzically at Nathan. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I need to tell him about what really happened to the Jasper expedition,” Nathan explained, “and it isn’t pretty.”

“Death seldom is.”

“Neither is despair,” Nathan said, thinking of what the captain of the Jasper had gone through.

“I think you may be selling him short, Captain. Mister Percival was a self-made millionaire who worked in some extreme environments out on the fringe worlds. He faced his own terminal illness and developed a way to survive even in the face of the greatest plague in known history. I expect he has seen as much death and despair as any of us.”

“I don’t know, Doc. Between the two of us, I think we’ve seen more than our fair share.”

Doctor Chen smiled. “I think you get my point, sir.”

“Yeah, I do.” Nathan leaned back in his chair. “Then you think it’s okay to break the news to him?”

“Yes, I do,” she assured him. “Besides, he is wearing a life-signs monitor. If he has an adverse reaction, we’ll respond accordingly.”

“Of course.” This time it was Nathan who smiled.

* * *

“I count six,” Josh said as he peered through the handheld view scope.

Loki sat leaning behind and against the same rock that Josh was peeking out over as he scanned the valley below. “I think the flight harness bruised my shoulder,” he complained as he rubbed it.

“Including those two shuttles, that makes eight total,” Josh added, ignoring Loki’s complaints.

“How long do you think it will take them to figure out we didn’t crash? There, I mean… because we did actually crash.”

“Crash land,” Josh said. “Big difference.”

“Not according to my shoulder.”

“I don’t know,” Josh answered. “It depends on how smart they are. Your average Takaran ground pounder would buy it in a heartbeat. A scientific type, not so much.” Josh turned around and slid back down the rock next to Loki. “The big question is, will they start searching around the local area, or will they assume that we used the fake crash as a screen to fly away low out over the valley?”

“I caught glimpses on the sensors as you were fighting to stay aloft after we came out of that waterfall,” Loki told him. “There are at least a few towns in that valley. I’m sure they heard the crash, and if so, they would have come outside to see what it was. If they ask them, they’ll report that they didn’t see anything flying away.”

“And that will make them search the area between where they last saw us and the fake crash site,” Josh concluded, “which is pretty much where we’re sitting.” He looked at Loki. Josh grimaced at his own aches and pains as the adrenaline of the chase and subsequent crash landing began to wear off. “What do you think? A few hours?”

“At the most.”

“Then we need to bust ass and get the ship working,” Josh declared.

“And do what? The canopy is busted, Josh.”

Josh tugged at his flight suit. “Pressure suits, remember?”

“You want to fly across a few light years in an open cockpit?”

“You want to spend our days hiding from the Jung and every loyalist on this miserable planet?”

“It didn’t look so miserable,” Loki tried to convince himself. “I mean, it’s got trees, rivers, waterfalls… and the mountains are an interesting shade of reddish-purple,” he added, looking at the mountainside in front of him.

“Maybe the damage is minor,” Josh said optimistically.

“We crashed into the side of a mountain, Josh.”

“Crash landed. There’s…”

“A difference, I know.” Loki finished for him as he struggled to get his feet back under him. He remained in a crouched position behind their cover as he began to move away from the rock.

“Let’s go take a look then.”

* * *

“So, how was your tour of the ship?” Nathan asked Mister Percival as he entered his quarters.

“Very interesting,” Mister Percival answered as he took a seat at his small desk.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t provide better accommodations,” Nathan apologized. “We’re at one hundred and ten percent crew capacity right now. These rooms near medical were converted into extended recovery rooms during one of our previous battles. Since we had already doubled up and hot racked portions of the crew, we decided to keep these spaces available until we got back to Earth, just in case.”

“Yes, your chief engineer alluded to your adventures in, what was it called, the Pentaurus cluster?”

“Yes, well, don’t tell anyone else he told you, or my security chief is liable to kick his ass.”

“Top secret stuff?”

“No, not really,” Nathan said. “She just tends to be overly cautious.”

“A good trait for a security officer, I suppose. Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy was quite talkative.”

“Yes, he gets that way, especially when it comes to the ship’s systems.”

“Indeed. He seems to take great pride in them as well as the enhancements being made by your new crew. It should be quite a feather in your cap when you return.”

“Perhaps.”

“So, what may I do for you, Captain?”

“I’m afraid that I have bad news.”

“About?”

“The Jasper expedition,” Nathan told him, holding up a data card. “We finished reviewing the Jasper’s logs—more specifically, Captain Dubnyk’s logs.”

“I see. And what did they reveal?” Mister Percival said.

Nathan noticed that Mister Percival seemed a bit apprehensive, which was to be expected. “The expedition experienced a number of mishaps, each of which contributed to their demise. A shuttle damaged during transit, the other one crashing before the ship was off-loaded, and finally a volcano that pushed their world into an ice age. I’m afraid the two hundred colonists that made it to the surface froze to death a few decades later.” Nathan paused a moment, waiting as much to see if Mister Percival had any questions. Nathan was trying to judge how Mister Percival was handling the news.

Mister Percival cleared his throat. “And the other colonists?”

“They apparently died in their stasis chambers,” Nathan stated as empathetically as possible. “They never knew of their own fate.”

“And the crew of the Jasper?”

“I assume they did know,” Nathan admitted. “However, lack of resources would have driven them back into their stasis pods sooner or later. Captain Dubnyk spent decades monitoring developments and coming out of stasis every so often to check on things. Eventually, the Jasper lost pressure, and the stasis systems refused to revive anyone. So I suppose they eventually perished in stasis as well.” Nathan offered the data card to Mister Percival. “You may read the logs for yourself, if you wish. I must warn you, though; Captain Dubnyk’s words can be quite moving, especially toward the end.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he agreed, taking the data card. “I will read it later, in private.”

“You can insert the card into any terminal,” Nathan explained. “It will open the documents automatically.”

“Thank you,” Mister Percival said. He looked down at the card for a moment and let out a sigh. “Perhaps it is all for the best.”

Nathan looked puzzled. “How so?”

“The galaxy, or at least the Earth’s corner of it, does not appear to have become the advanced utopia many of us had hoped would evolve from the ashes of the plague.”

“That seems a harsh judgment, Mister Percival,” Nathan responded, a bit taken aback. “What did you expect?”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Captain,” Mister Percival said. “I understand that humanity has struggled greatly to survive. But you must understand something. Those of us that had to face that plague clung to the hope that it would lead to something better for the following generations. For many, what made them wake up every day and carry on
was
that hope: that maybe they might do something on that day that would contribute to whatever came after.”

“I’m sorry if I seemed defensive,” Nathan said. “I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the survivors, especially those that could not escape.”

“Yes, they had it worse than most. Even before the end was in sight, before all hope had been lost, many millions had taken their own lives, having already given up on their futures. Only those with the means even dreamed of escaping.”

“We have heard many references to expeditions and colonization packages as if they were complete kits bought and sold.”

“The only good thing about the plague, Captain, was its timing. It occurred at a uniquely opportune time in human history. Advances in FTL propulsion had just opened up deep space at far less expense than ever before. Travel times between core and fringe worlds had been reduced by fifty to seventy-five percent, and there were catalogs of star systems containing habitable worlds that had been surveyed by either remote probes or deep space observatories. There were literally thousands of potentially habitable worlds out there just waiting for colonization.”

“But there were so many worlds close in that had already been colonized, most of which were nowhere near carrying capacity,” Nathan said. “Why start over farther out, far away from additional help and resources?”

“Dreams, Captain. Dreams of creating something new, something unique, something better.” Mister Percival leaned forward, looking directly at Nathan. “There are many indisputable truths about humans, the most common of which are that we are willing to kill to survive, we always want to know what is over the next hill, and we always think we can do it better than the other guy. Another one is that, as a people, we prefer to mingle with those more like ourselves.”

“So you’re saying that people wanted to settle worlds and populate them with their own kind?”

“Race, religion, political or economic systems… There were even those who wanted to live with only vegetarians, or people with blond hair and blue eyes. It was like a new fad. Get a thousand people to sell everything and buy into another attempt to create the perfect society.”