Ep.#5 - "Rise of the Corinari" (32 page)

The Karuzari had vehemently protested the idea of their leader conducting the test flight, but Tug had stood firm in his decision, stating that no one was more qualified to deal with whatever emergency might come about during the tests. He and Josh were currently the only two pilots in the system that were qualified to pilot the interceptor, and Josh had only flown it a few times. There were many pilots on Corinair, of course, all of which could be taught to pilot the interceptor, but time was short. Jalea had already been on Ancot for two weeks without any contact, as the Aurora did not want to risk exposure in the Savoy system again so soon after her mission masquerading as the Yamaro.

In the end, Tug had won the argument, and Mister Cauley had lost. The knowledge that he would be forever registered in Corinairan history as the first of his people to operate such a system didn’t seem to ease the poor man’s tension. Tug smiled to himself as he remembered how difficult it had been to get the terrified man into the cockpit of the interceptor. As they had walked across the Aurora’s hangar bay toward the interceptor, he had feared the scientist’s legs were about to give out. Fortunately in the end, the man had summoned up enough courage to climb into the cockpit. It was either courage or fear of looking silly in front of his fellow Corinairans, as most of them would’ve given anything to be the one climbing into the interceptor.

“Mister Cauley,” Tug called over his helmet comm, “are you ready?”

“No,” he responded. “Are they even in position yet? I mean, they have to go a whole light hour. That’s about a billion kilometers.”

“They arrived at the same instant they disappeared, Mister Cauley,” Tug told him, “just like we will.”

“Thanks. That last part really helped.”

“How does everything look back there?” Tug asked. He could monitor the miniature jump drive from his position in the front seat as well, as the ship had been designed to be operated by one pilot. However, the scientist was there for a reason, and keeping his mind focused on the task at hand was likely to keep his thoughts away from what was about to take place.

“Everything appears normal,” he reported. “The reactors are running at one hundred percent, the energy banks are fully charged, and the jump drive is ready. Jump algorithm is plotted, verified, and locked.”

“Very well,” Tug said. “Accelerating forward.” Tug pushed his throttles forward, causing his main engines to ignite and come up to one percent thrust. They were already moving forward at considerable speed, as they had carried the Aurora’s momentum with them when they had lifted off her deck. However, the first test jump had been calculated and recalculated by the Corinairans prior to this flight. It was to occur at an exact point in space on a precise trajectory at a predetermined speed. The Aurora had performed the exact same jump they were about to attempt, according to the exact same plot, in order to compare performance parameters and accuracy between the two ships.

Tug watched his flight display as he maneuvered the interceptor into the center of the indicated flight path. “Activating auto-flight system,” he announced as he touched the screen to turn the auto-flight system on.” The indicator turned green. “Auto-flight now has control,” Tug announced. “Jump point in thirty seconds.”

“Oh God,” Mister Cauley mumbled as he frantically scanned every little parameter displayed from his consoles at the rear of the cockpit.

“Mister Cauley,” Tug called, “you will have three choices when we jump. You can either drop your auto-visor first, close your eyes really tight, or be blinded for a few seconds and see a blue dot in your vision for an hour afterward.”

“Huh?”

“I would strongly suggest you drop your auto-visor,” Tug said. “Jump point in ten seconds.” Tug pulled down his auto-visor, which was designed to adjust its light filtering qualities automatically to protect the wearer’s eyes from the bright light often encountered during space flight.

“Oh God,” Mister Cauley repeated, dropping his own auto-visor and locking it in place.

“Jumping in five…”

Mister Cauley scanned his instruments again, checking for any anomalies that would require a last moment abort.

“…four…”

Part of him hoped he would see such an anomaly.

“…three…”

Mister Cauley had no wish to go through with the jump…

“…two…”

…but neither did he want his people’s jump drive program to be set back.

“…one…”

There were no anomalies.

“…jump.”

Blue-white light spilled out from the small emitters spread out across the interceptor. In a split second, the light from each emitter seemed to join into one, covering the entire surface of the ship. As the gaps in the field of light closed, the intensity of the blue-white light quickly rose. Although from Mister Cauley’s perspective it seemed to take forever, it all happened in a fraction of a second. The light flashed, momentarily filling the cockpit with the eerie blue-white glow, and then all was normal again.

“Jump complete,” Tug announced.

Mister Cauley looked around. “Are we there? Did we make it?”

“Checking position,” Tug stated.

“
Tug, Aurora,
” Naralena’s voice called across the comms. “
Report your status
.”

“Aurora, Tug. All systems are good.”

“
Congratulations, Mister Tugwell
,” Naralena said. Tug could hear the voices of the Aurora’s crew, as well as the Corinairan scientists from the jump drive program that were observing the test from the Aurora’s bridge, all cheering triumphantly.

“You mean we did it?” Mister Cauley asked in amazement.

“We did it,” Tug answered.

“Oh my God, that was incredible,” Mister Cauley exclaimed.

“You see? I told you it was nothing to worry about,” Tug told him.

“You were right. That was easy!”

Ten minutes later, when they climbed down from the interceptor and were greeted by several dozen Corinairan scientists all cheering and laughing, Tug noticed Mister Cauley had somehow developed a bit of a swagger in his walk. Tug couldn’t help but smile.

* * *

Jalea went into the small home on the outskirts of Ancot city. As usual, it was raining outside. It had actually been raining for several days straight, which was not unusual for Ancot city. She shook off her umbrella and placed it in the corner, removing her poncho as well. She hung it on the wall and then made her way through the part in the heavy curtain that separated the entry foyer from the rest of the home. The video screen was flickering in the corner of the dimly lit room, playing some program that no one was watching.

She made her way across the room and down the short hallway, entering the bathroom at the end of the corridor. After closing the door, she stepped into the shower stall, swinging the stall door closed behind her. She pulled down on the shower head, causing the entire wall to slide forward nearly a meter, creating an opening through which she passed.

The hidden doorway was at the head of a long, narrow staircase that descended some four meters below the home. She could see the glow of light coming from the room at the bottom of the stairs and could hear men speaking in low, hushed tones as she descended the staircase.

The room was large, covering nearly the same area as the entire house above it. The ceilings were low and supported by preformed beams and columns that had been brought down in pieces and then fusion-bonded together in position. The bare dirt and rock had been walled over, and the gaps had been filled with a spray-on foam that provided insulation for both temperature and sound. All in all, the room had a very clean and professional appearance.

Unfortunately she could not say the same for the men and women that regularly occupied the room for days on end. They had to be careful about their comings and goings to avoid detection by both neighbors and the authorities in Ancot city, both of which were not supportive of the Karuzari. Ancot was considered one of the most difficult worlds on which to operate for the Karuzari for just this reason. Jalea had been surprised to make contact with six people claiming to be members of the rebellion. Unfortunately, she only recognized two of them, and therefore she had to be careful what she said around the other four. To be safe, she had chosen to speak to no one about her real mission, nor about the situation in the Darvano system, revealing only that she had been instructed to monitor all Ta’Akar activity in the system and log it, and that she would be contacted periodically to collect the information she had gathered.

So far, she had collected nothing of any importance. Crop yields, local crime reports, and some Takaran comm-drone traffic of little interest to their cause. After a few weeks of near daily rain, she was already growing tired of her assignment. Luckily, the man she had met up with and who pretended to be her husband was someone she knew and trusted well enough to feel comfortable letting her guard down without fear of being assassinated.

Still, she had hoped to at least establish a reliable cell on Ancot so that she could return to Karuzara, but this was not yet the case. She was beginning to wonder if it ever would be.

“Jalea,” the man called Tomon said, “I have received word from Rena.”

Jalea did not care for Rena. She was an attractive and intelligent woman who chose to engage in relations with her sources in order to retrieve information from them. Although Jalea had used similar methods in the past, she found much of the information obtained in such fashion to be suspect, as men seeking to impress their sexual partners often exaggerated to accomplish their goals.

“She reports that a Ta’Akar frigate will arrive here in a few days, a week at most.”

It was exactly the type of news she had hoped to discover. “From where does it come?”

“Norwitt,” Tomon added, “it comes from the Norwitt system.”

“Then it will likely head for Darvano next,” Jalea said, gesturing for Tomon to follow her into the corner, away from the others. “You must not speak of this to the others.” She peered over his shoulder to make sure those in the room that she did not trust could not hear her words. “Instruct Rena to do the same. Do you understand?”

“Of course.”

“I have another task for you, Tomon. Monitor this frequency,” she told him, writing the number down on a small scrap of paper. “Only at the times indicated by this algorithm,” she added as she continued to scribble on the paper. “Apply this algorithm from midnight of the Day of the Harvest. Each time, you must only monitor for one minute, no longer. Understood?”

“I know how this works, Jalea. I have worked comms before.”

“Of course. When you make contact, transmit the information about the frigate,” she instructed. “Call me the moment you make contact,” she added, handing him a personal comm-unit. “Then dispose of this unit.”

“Of course. But who will be contacting me?”

“I do not know, not for sure. All I
do
know is that it will be someone you can trust, and it will only be on this frequency and at the times indicated by the algorithm.” Jalea put her hand on his neck. “Tell Rena she has done well and to continue to get more information from this person. If she discovers anything else relating to this frigate, include it in the message.”

“Yes, Jalea, right away.”

* * *

“Good morning people,” Nathan greeted as he sat down at the head of the conference table in the command briefing room. “We’ll start with you, Tug, since you’ve been having so much fun with your new jump interceptor.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Tug began. “As you are probably all aware, we have been putting the miniature jump drive through rigorous testing over the last few days. I am happy to report that it has performed exactly as expected.”

“What’s the official range?” Nathan wondered.

“Although we have not pushed it to its limits as of yet, it appears that the maximum safe range is one light year. The minimum range is one light minute.”

“One light year?” Nathan said. “That’s not very far.”

“In order for the jump to occur,” Abby explained, “the jump drive must dump massive amounts of energy into both the inner and outer fields at precisely the correct moment in order to cause the transition to occur. To do this on the Aurora, we use energy storage banks combined with the output from two anti-matter reactors. Tug’s interceptor uses simple fusion reactors. They are extremely efficient, but they cannot generate enough energy at once to jump any farther than a single light year.”

“Can’t we install energy banks in the interceptor to increase her jump range?” Nathan asked.

“There simply is not any room for them,” Tug said.

“Captain,” Abby interrupted, “I should remind you that the use of storage banks is why the Aurora has to take the time to recharge between long jumps. The interceptor will not have this restriction, therefore it could jump considerable distances within a short period of time.”

“We could send it all the way back to Earth,” Nathan contemplated.

“It is a bit early to make such an assumption with any level of confidence, sir, but theoretically, yes. It could reach Earth in a matter of weeks.”

“Still,” Nathan said, “it does open up some interesting possibilities.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jessica commented, “we could send a message stating that we’re alive, that the jump drive works.”

“Exactly,” Nathan agreed. “Tell them to start building more.”

“Maybe include details of some of the weapons and shield technologies they have here as well,” Jessica added. “That might give them an edge against the Jung.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Captain,” Abby warned. “We still have a lot of testing to conduct. I would not recommend making such a journey at this time. It is simply too risky.”

“Can the interceptor be operated by a single pilot?” Nathan asked.

“Yes,” Tug answered. “Although we have been conducting our tests with Mister Cauley as second seat, his job has been limited strictly to the monitoring of the system for scientific and developmental purposes. I have been piloting the ship as well as plotting and executing the jumps.”