“Sensors are working on it, Ma’am,” Derek reported with a look at Tutula to let the alien know that Perkins was not blaming her for the lack of data.
“Captain Bonsu is correct,” Tutula agreed. “Our sensors were blinded by spatial distortion of the jump field. We need seven data points to determine our position in space.”
“The jump drive was not significantly damaged by the jump,” Ernt reported happily. “The energy used was within three percent of my estimate! The drive should be capable of performing another jump without trouble,” the Jeraptha shook his head in amazement.
Perkins waited impatiently while the two pilots worked to collect navigation data and Irene watched the process. Finally, Derek raised a hand. “Got it. The good news is we jumped pretty far. The bad news is we are forty one million miles off target.”
“Forty one million?” Perkins gasped. “How the hell-”
“The calculations were accurate,” Tutula stated in a tone that invited no argument. “The slight battle damage to the banks of Jeraptha jump drive coils could not entirely account for such a large margin of error. The Ruhar emulator program must be faulty. Colonel Perkins,” Tutula unstrapped from her couch and turned to address the human commander. “We should have enough data from this jump to further refine the emulator system.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Perkins kept her temper in check. “Because if we’re going through a wormhole, our jump capability needs to be dead on accurate.”
The next jump, twenty nine hours later, after feverish work recoding the emulator program, delivered much more favorable results. Despite the jump coils not working together properly and them having no way to fix that problem, the second jump came within two hundred and seven thousand miles of the target. Since the second jump was much longer, Perkins, the pilots and the cadets involved in programming the jump considered their accuracy a smashing success. Perkins waved her arms to suppress premature celebration. “Are we in position, with the right timing, to go through the wormhole?”
“Yes,” Irene replied with confidence, pumping a fist that only Derek could see so they could share a private celebration. “The wormhole will not emerge in this space for another three days and,” she checked her display, “seventeen hours. That is plenty of time to maneuver the Deal Me In near the event horizon. We have to give the wormhole plenty of room anyway, they emerge in a slightly different location each time.”
“Since none of us have ever taken a ship through an Elder wormhole, and probably no one has ever moved a star carrier by a ship on a hardpoint providing the thrust, can we do this?”
“Oh, yes, Colonel Perkins,” Nert spoke up happily, a broad grin exposing his incisors. “I have observed the process many times. There is no trick to it, we just locate the event horizon and,” he made a ring of the index finger and thumb on one hand and vigorously demonstrated plunging his other index finger in and out of the ring, “we go in. It is easy! Oooooh, so easy.”
Emily Perkins had to cover her face with a hand to not burst out laughing. The goofily innocent grin on Nert’s face as he made the unintentionally rude gesture was funny, but seeing Irene’s face growing beet red as Nert enthusiastically kept going almost made Perkins lose her composure.
“Ok, Nert,” Derek reached out to restrain one of Nert’s arms. “The ship goes in the hole, we get the idea. Nert is telling the truth, Colonel. Transition through a wormhole is automatic, all the ship needs to do is line up the approach and make sure we don’t touch the edge of the event horizon ring.”
“What happens if we do touch the ring?”
“Then, part of the ship goes through, and the other part,” Derek ran a hand through the air in a cutting motion, “doesn’t. Don’t worry, Ma’am, our flight training did simulate a wormhole transition.”
Perkins cocked her head. “How extensive was this training?” Her pilots had only been in their starship pilot training for three days before the Bosphuraq jumped in and spoiled the party.
Derek looked to Irene and they both shrugged. “Two, three hours?” Seeing Perkins eyebrows raised in alarm, Derek added to reassure her “Our instructor said there wasn’t any point to running that sim much longer, because the wormhole transition maneuver is so simple. Jumping into position close to an Elder wormhole is the tricky part, the rest is just normal-space navigation. The three of us agreed Tutula will handle the transition through the wormhole, with Irene acting as copilot and me calling out navigation waypoints.”
“Except in this case, the Toaster is carrying half a star carrier on its back,” Perkins pinched the bridge of her nose. Irene had noted that Emily Perkins had the honor of being the first human ever to command a starship. What the pilot had not said was that Perkins also had the crushing responsibility of being the first human ever to command a starship. If she screwed up or missed something important, she could get the entire crew killed. Even if at least one cadet survived the disaster, Perkins knew her actions and decisions would be scrutinized under a microscope by a species who overall, did not like the idea of former enemies serving aboard their warships.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Derek agreed, not mentioning that the Toaster was technically attached by its belly rather than its back. “We’ve practiced maneuvering the combined ships and we know the flight characteristics of this clumsy beast. Our flight plan,” he called up that data on his display, “has us approaching the event horizon at an angle, with the ship’s thrust pushing us on a curve into the wormhole. If the engines fail, we will shoot safely past the event horizon and have to try again at another emergence point, but we won’t crash into it,” he announced with confidence.
“You’re telling me that jumping a thousand lightyears through an ancient rip in spacetime is the safest part of this journey?”
Irene answered for Derek. “I know it seems crazy, Ma’am, but there’s nothing we can do to screw up that wormhole. Everything else we do out here has multiple potentials for error.”
Perkins shook her head slowly, knowing she needed to trust the judgment of her pilots. And knowing she had to trust an Elder device that no one in the galaxy fully understood. “Let’s hope we don’t get a visit from the screw-up fairy. All right, release the ship from jump conditions and secure for normal-space maneuvering.”
The transition through the wormhole was as smooth and easy as her pilots said it would be, although she noticed Irene’s knuckles turning white from tension, as the ship lined up for the approach and flashed through from one part of the galaxy to another. They kept a careful eye on the charge level of the jump drive capacitors, which were getting drained rapidly. By the time they were ready for a jump into the Camp Alpha star system, it was clear that jump would be the Jeraptha starship’s last action. “Ma’am,” Irene answered after a team spent two hours of checking and rechecking every part of the jump drive system. “We can jump into the system with a comfortable safety margin,” she didn’t mention that ‘comfortable’ meant less than seven percent. “But that will be it. After the jump, the capacitors won’t have the energy to get the coils over the threshold for a jump. We’ll be stuck in that star system, and the Deal Me In’s normal space propulsion system is offline. If we’re flying to Camp Alpha, we’ll do it in the Ruh Tostella,” she used the ship’s formal name because her audience included many cadets.
“Understood. We can do it?”
“Yes, confidence is high,” Irene ignored the grimaces from some of the engineering cadets. “We need to,” she pulled up their planned course on the display, “jump in here, on the near side of the second planet. That will mask our gamma ray burst from being detected on Camp Alpha. It will take thirteen days to fly to Camp Alpha, but we can’t get the Toast- the Ruh Tostella into orbit there, the reactor will shut down before we get there. The final leg of the flight needs to be in dropships.”
Perkins had assumed that would be their best option. The review continued for another hour, partly because there was a large group of people involved in the process
of verifying all the systems involved and they all wanted to weigh in on the decision, so Perkins politely endured the endless rehashing of issues. She also listened because she wanted them all to buy into the plan to set down on Camp Alpha, and take shelter there until rescue hopefully arrived. It wasn’t a great plan, and there were a lot of unhappy cadets. But no one had a better idea that was realistic, and even Bifft grudgingly admitted the ship’s failing condition did not offer an option of remaining aboard and hoping for the best.
The final jump of the Deal Me In was successful, in that the ship did not explode, they emerged less than one hundred eighty thousand miles from their target location, and they were not immediately ambushed by enemy starships. Because the jump was draining the last bit of power from the capacitors and the power flow was unsteady, the jump was rough enough to make the Toaster’s one reactor shut down.
“Let me guess,” Perkins tried to keep her own expression neutral as she saw the anguish displayed by Jinn. “The reactor can’t be fixed?”
“No,” relief flashed across Jinn’s face. Relief she did not have to argue with their human commander, and, she had to admit to herself, relief that she was no longer responsible for keeping a dangerous reactor limping along.
“Well, it got us here, I suppose we can be grateful for that,” Perkins said sourly. “I didn’t mean that,” she quickly added. “Your ship designers have created remarkable machines, and you and your team,” she waved an arm to encompass the exhausted group of engineering cadets, “deserve congratulations for what you have achieved. What you achieved on a real ship, in a real crisis. When you get back to the academy, classroom exercises will seem a bit dull, won’t they?” That drew weary smiles from most of the cadets. “We’ll need to fly the rest of the way in dropships. It will be a long flight in tight quarters, but-”
“About that, Ma’am?” Irene waved for attention. “We have a bit of a problem.”
“A bit?”
“Colonel,” Derek tapped the display in front of him. “Lady Karma has been so nice, getting us here and all, I think she wants payback now. There’s a group of Kristang on Camp Alpha.”
“God-” Perkins thought better of taking the Lord’s name in vain right then. “How many?”
“It is difficult to say exactly,” Tutula spoke. “The signal is faint, we are picking up short-range surface-to-surface transmissions from a single site that is almost around the curve of the planet, they do not appear to have an active communications satellite. One of the transmissions used a Kristang word that means ‘eight’,” she wiggled the four fingers on one hand. “The speaker complained there are too few of them left, more than eight but less than sixteen.”
“You get anything else from that transmission?”
“It was one soldier complaining to another about the poor quality of the food, and that they do not expect a ship to return for many months, so they are stuck on the surface. Colonel, I believe they occupy a single, small site that is some type of research facility.”
Great, Perkins thought bitterly. Karma had indeed been kind to them, until that moment. “Tutula, you keep listening, I want Jates to listen with you so we’re not relying on translations that might not be entirely accurate. Cadet Colhsoon,” she turned to find the senior cadet, who was floating near the rear of the compartment, looking angry. “Get people loaded into dropships while we select a flightpath and landing site. We will come in over the opposite side of the planet from that Kristang base, and keep our presence concealed.”
“I’m telling you, the human is going to get us all killed,” Bifft whispered from the copilot seat of the dropship. He didn’t know why he was whispering, the only occupants of the ship were Ruhar cadets.
“She had no way to know,” Jinn replied as she ran a diagnostic check on the ship’s systems from a console at the cockpit’s rear bulkhead, making sure the airspace craft was ready for atmospheric entry and flight. She had to rely on painstakingly referring to a checklist on the console, because she had no experience with that model of dropship. It was a humbling task and if she missed something critical or made a mistake, everyone aboard could be killed in the fiery process of contacting the atmosphere.
“It was a possibility.”
“It was, and we all knew it,” Jinn did not look away from her work. “There is a small group of Kristang at one site, and Colonel Perkins plans for us to land on the other side of the planet. The Kristang will never know we’re there.”
Bifft snorted. “Maybe. If we’re lucky.”
“They didn’t spot the Ruh Tostella flying past, and that’s a bigger sensor signature. They’re not looking. We’ll be as safe as we can be.”
“We-”
“What?” She swiveled her chair to confront the senior cadet. “What do you suggest? Colonel Perkins gave the only order she could. The ship’s reactor shut down, we couldn’t stay aboard. The dropships can’t maintain life support for long, not for this many people. Once we jumped into this system, we had only one option. You talk a lot about how leaders have to make tough decisions,” she clacked her incisors on her lower teeth in a derisive gesture, because guys like Bifft always assumed they would be in positions of leadership. “The human made a tough decision.”
“Not so tough,” Bifft snapped. “She had no other choice.”
“If that’s what you think, then what is your problem?”
“This,” Bifft fumbled with how to respond. “This whole operation has been a mess.”
“You could have done better?” It was her turn to sniff. She turned back to her console. “Even if we do get killed here, we jumped a Jeraptha star carrier. None of our people have ever done that.” Along the way to Camp Alpha, the Ruh Tostella had dropped off flight recorder buoys before every jump and wormhole transition, so any Ruhar ship that found the buoys would learn that the emulation software had worked, after a few adjustments. “I don’t expect any of us will achieve anything more significant than that in our entire careers. That is better than staying aboard a dying ship in the middle of interstellar space, praying for rescue. That was your plan.”
Bifft opened his mouth to retort, but he couldn’t think of anything to say, so he sat and silently fumed, and hated Lieutenant Colonel Emily Perkins.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jates and Tutula had been conferring about something, heads close together in a heated argument and their zPhone speakers shut off. When Tutula grabbed the front of Jates’ uniform top and shook him, Perkins had enough.
“Knock it off, you two. Mind telling me what’s going on?”
Tutula cast her eyes away in a guilty gesture, so Jates straightened in his chair. “Colonel, with the help of Arlon Dahl, we have penetrated the outer layer of the base’s computers.”
“Outstanding,” Perkins grinned. “Good work.”
“It is nothing, really,” Tutula shrugged. “They made almost no attempt at information security, except for details of their current research project. The security of that system is very robust, we will not be able to gain access from here.”
“What’s the problem, then? You weren’t detected?”
“No, we have not been detected. As I said, the base is not concerned about external security. At the base were eleven security personnel and twenty eight civilian researchers, all the researchers were evacuated eighteen days ago. The eleven guards have one dropship.”
Perkins considered that. “Ok, a small contingent, lightly armed, and they don’t know about us, right?”
“Correct. It is unlikely-”
“Tutula, this will go a lot faster if you get to the point, and tell me what was worth you two arguing about.”
Tutula took a breath and looked at Jates, who shook his head. She ignored him. “Colonel, perhaps you should sit down.”
Oh shit, Emily told herself as she lowered into a seat on the somewhat flimsy folding chair, in the tent that was the group’s headquarters on Camp Alpha. The trip down to the surface had been filled equally with ten
sion and boredom, and they now had the dropships covered with stealth netting, tents set up for everyone, and she had a team trying to hack into the Kristang computers. She would not have risked doing that, except Arlon Dahl had assured her that his handheld computer was more powerful than any type of Kristang system. “Go ahead. Give me the bad news.”
“In addition to this planet being a military training site, as you know, it was and is also a research base. Even before your military units cycled through this world, the warrior caste brought humans here to study.” Jates urgently shot a warning look at Tutula, which she also ignored. “To study, and to experiment on. Colonel, this will not be easy to hear.” She related the facts of human civilians being kidnapped from Earth and used for horrible tests of bioweapons, genetically-engineered pathogens intended to be used against Earth. Thousands of human subjects had died on Camp Alpha, half a world away from the blissfully ignorant human Expeditionary Force who had eagerly been training to serve their lizard masters.
“These experiments,” Perkins asked in a voice flattened into calm from shock. It sounded to her like her own voice was coming from far away. “How far have they advanced?”
“Those experiments were terminated shortly after the wormhole access to your homeworld was shut off. No further supply of test subjects could be brought here from Earth, and the White Wind clan fell into serious financial trouble when they lost access to Earth. Colonel, I am sorry to tell you that, before the wormhole shut down, the experiments had proceeded far enough that a supply of that original bioweapon was shipped to your planet, to be used against your people in case of rebellion. The pathogen was still in development, but,” Tutula tapped the display, “the report stated it was considered effective enough to kill much of the human population. If needed,” she added quietly.
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