by Trent Falls
“Terran shuttle. This is Lieutenant Victor Gi of the Xen Twelfth Fighter Wing! We order you to follow us back to our carrier or we will shoot you down. Comply!” the voice of the Xen pilot came in over the Tequesta’s radio.
Alex responded by pushing his shuttle harder. The Tequesta was soon racing away from Altair Nine into open space at 57,000 kph. The Xen fighters were keeping pace. They had closed to within weapons range.
“I repeat! Unknown Terran shuttle! Turn back and follow us to our carrier or you will be fired upon!” the pilot’s voice boomed electronically over the radio again.
John took a deep breath. “We cutting into warp any time soon?”
“The system isn’t fully powered yet.” Alex breathed deeply as well. “I thought the capacitor chain would be fully charged by now.”
“You’ve been burning power running from these bastards!” John noted. “This is not a good oversight!”
A stream of violent red flashes cut ahead of their bow, missing the Tequesta’s nose by a few feet.
“Shit! That was a warning shot!” John blurted.
“No kidding?!?” Alex shouted sarcastically.
“This is your final warning, Terran Shuttle. Turn back to heading seven mark seven one or we wil…”
A solid red beam cut through the wing of the lead Xen fighter. It spiraled away violently. The pilot ejected from the craft a few seconds before it exploded.
“What the fuck?!?” the second Xen fighter pilot yelled.
Two more solid red laser beams cut the Xen fighter in half. The black Martian Steel scout craft fired a third red blast, incapacitating the fighter by burning a hole in one of its engines. The fighter veered away only to lose power. Without power the fighter sailed off into the black of space.
“What the hell was that?!?” John shouted. The Xen fighters were gone from the short range sensor screen. There appeared to be no other vehicles in the area.
Alex’s eyes turned upward to the top of his forward viewport. The bottom end of a black scout vessel came into view from the black of space. It became more detailed, flying at incredible speed to get ahead of the Tequesta.
“What the hell???” Alex’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t see that on any of the sensors!” John checked over every single screen on the flight deck he could think of.
“It’s a prospector scout ship!” Alex exclaimed. “I think… it’s a Martian Steel ship.”
“No!” John noted in disbelief.
“I’m telling you it is!” Alex argued.
Both men looked ahead. They quickly noticed that a red underside running light was flashing on and off. It took a moment to realize it was code.
“Morse code!” John said aloud.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Morse code! That light!” John pointed to the red running light.
Alex recalled Morse as best he could. ‘Five. Parsecs. Dead. Ahead.’ The message continued to repeat.
John, upon translating the message, went right to work at the copilot station. He pulled out the stowed keyboard and began entering new coordinates for the warp system.
“Did you get that message?” John asked Alex indirectly as he worked.
“Five parsecs. Got it.” Alex answered. “Any idea who that is?”
“None! But they just saved our ass so I’m betting they’re on our side.” John replied.
John completed the retargeting of the warp navigation system. The instant he finished he located the Tequesta’s running light switches. He toggled the running lights, sending back coded confirmation to the black scout ship. The scout ship flashed back, then discontinued its code. It raced forward at greater speed, breaking away from the Tequesta until shooting away into warp.
Alex reached out to the red switch cover for his warp drive. He popped the protective red cover up and pulled back on the activation lever.
The white and powder blue trim Tequesta flashed forward into warp; vanishing into the stars ahead.
Jumping through warp was never exact. There was always some element of the unknown in the ship’s navigation computer due to the ever changing universe.
The Tequesta fell out of warp about five parsecs away. The black ship that had jumped with them exited warp about a hundred kilometers away. Close by galactic standards but not close enough for John to see the other ship out the window of the Tequesta’s flight deck.
“Where is it?” John asked aloud.
Alex checked his main screen, then looked up to a pair of smaller touch screens above his head. He tapped one of them, bringing up another sensor setting. Passive radiation scans and pulse radar were useless. He dared not use LIDAR this deep in Xen space for fear of attracting unwanted attention to himself. Toggling to infrared yielded some results, with the unknown ship appearing as a quick blur of orange. If Alex didn’t know what to look for he might have missed it.
“It’s hard to track, even on IR.” Alex noted aloud.
Outside in space, the black Martian Steel prospecting ship took a wide bank, turning back towards the Tequesta.
There was a sudden pinging on the flight deck com system. The black scout ship was calling.
“You boys look a bit lost.” Aiyana’s voice came in over the radio.
“Shit!” John exclaimed. Of all people!
Alex depressed the radio transmit button on his flight yoke. “Please… let’s not use real names here.” He spoke aloud.
“Understood.” Aiyana’s voice replied. “You boys are in a ton of trouble. What the hell are you doing out here?!?”
“They wanted me out here.” John replied into the radio quickly. “I came. Someone obviously went to a lot of trouble back on Mars to get me to come here.”
“Tell me honestly,” Ana spoke in a deadly serious tone, “did you have any part in the operation to break you out of our custody?”
“No.” John replied with absolute certainty.
“We found the bodies of two mercs in the Martian plains.” Aiyana continued. “Did you kill them?”
John paused for a moment. “Yes.” He answered with the same blunt honesty. He waited for a moment in thought before continuing. “It was necessary. They presented an unacceptable risk.”
Part of the return transmission was cut off. Ana probably had her thumb on a mute switch. They heard her sigh in response but only partially as the transmission clipped. Her voice returned in moments with the same breathy weariness. “Alright, you better follow me out. We need to get out of Xen space and back home.”
“I’m not leaving.” John replied sternly.
Ana grumbled to herself. She seemed to search her head silently for a name. “Marshall!” she referred to John by his old title. “You need to get your ass back to Earthspace! This is already a shitstorm as it is!”
“I’m not leaving!” John shouted back adamantly. “I didn’t want to leave the damned planet to begin with! They wanted me to go to Altair Nine! I went there but didn’t finish the job.”
“Marshall.” Ana was a bit calmer. She again paused silently. “I think I may know where she’s being held. Your girl. We need to get this information back home.”
John sat back in the copilot seat. For a moment he looked out through the forward canopy window into the stars ahead. His eyes searched for Ana’s ship out there in the black but it was difficult to see.
“You have information on where they’re holding her?” John asked bluntly.
Aiyana, in her cockpit, let out a sigh. After all these years she still knew John and how he would respond. “I lingered near Altair Nine for a while. Caught a smaller Xen vessel sending coded transmission packs through space.”
“Where is she?” John demanded coldly.
“We should leave.” Aiyana asserted herself, bringing forth her COO tone of voice. “We’ll turn the info over to the proper channels. Let them conduct a rescue mission.”
“Listen to me very carefully.” John noted sharply into the com. “You and I know very well th
ere won’t be any rescue missions this deep in Xen territory! When these people don’t get what they want they’ll kill her. Do you understand? I’ve seen it before and I know the people holding her. They will KILL her! Now… if you have information on HER whereabouts I want to know it right now. I’m the only shot she has.”
“Negative! Turn your ship around and follow me out!” Ana pushed back.
“There’s no way I’m leaving! I’ll have my friend here drop me off with the Xen before I leave here.”
“You can’t be serious!” Ana protested.
“Believe it!” John jabbed back.
Aiyana let out a clearly audible breath. “Do you understand what you’re saying? Let’s head back. Every second we’re out here is another second we might get blown to kingdom come! We’ll talk back home!”
“Where is she?!” John demanded. “This is my only family, now. If you keep me from saving her so help me…”
Aiyana sat in her cockpit; shocked. If she didn’t know better she thought John was about to threaten her. It was incredibly out of character for John. Despite their break up and bad history, John had never been outwardly hostile towards her.
“I’m sorry.” John caught himself. “You just… you know I’m right. There won’t be any rescue ops this deep. You know it! By the time the bureaucrats get involved you know she’ll be dead!”
Aiyana sat silently in thought for a while. She sat back fully into the memory foam padding of her chair. Her athletic frame, wrapped in the thick leather-like black flight suit, rested rather comfortably in the seat. She really didn’t want to encourage John but a part of her knew he was right. Ana was thinking first and foremost of politics; of maintaining the peace with the Xen. A part of her brain also weighted the economic prospects for the war. She hated herself for thinking such a thing but she had become accustomed to it during her tenure as COO for Richmond Howe and Martian Steel.
“61 Virginis.” Ana finally disclosed the information. “That’s where the packets were most likely sent, which means she’s probably being held on Isis.”
“Isis.” John repeated the name for himself. He wracked his brain trying to recall the planet. Another forest world with colder temperatures. Isis also was an out-of-the-way outpost. Though not as barren as Altair Nine there was very little human population on the planet. And Euler would most definitely stay away from any major cities. Isis was a large planet. Finding Julie would probably be extremely difficult.
Chapter 15
Three Xen troop transport shuttles landed on the main hangar deck of the Xinglong. Each of their eleven metric tons settled onto the ceramic composite hangar deck, settling on their four articulated landing struts. Each ship set down with a deep metallic whump. The side doors of the vehicles hissed – then slid open. The Xen advanced recon team emerged from the shuttles. They were sweaty, dirty, and wary from searching for John and Alex in Altair Nine’s vast rainforests.
A duty sergeant led the team away from the shuttles. The giant hangar around them was a hive of activity. The recon team walked single file over the deck towards a wide sliding airtight door at the far end of the hangar. From there, they walked through a wide corridor, lit by rows of overhead neon white lights. Other enlisted personnel and officers walked back the opposite direction towards whatever duty station they were assigned in the main hangar.
The recon team was led into one of the many theater style briefing rooms. The rows of seats were tiered, allowing an unobstructed field of vision down towards the podium and main screen of the room. The recon team filed into the room as they had many times before. Lieutenant Zao and Captain Magnuson entered the briefing room from a door at the left of the theater seating. Euler entered behind him. The sight of a Terran, and someone not in Xen uniform, gave some of the men in the recon team pause as they sat down.
“Good evening, gentlemen.” Lieutenant Zao stepped to the podium to greet them.
Some in the recon team smirked at the sound of the word “evening”. They had been extracted about forty minutes ago on what was the morning side of the planet. A few of the men looked up to the red LED clock at the top of the far wall which read the ship’s time as 1820 hours.
“I needn’t remind you of the sensitivity of the information we’re about to discuss. This debriefing is to be considered Top Secret. The details of this debrief are not to be discussed aloud nor discussed amongst the crew.” Zao added.
The recon team sat silent in their acknowledgment.
“Let’s start with your account of the search operation, Lieutenant Surgh. Tell us your account of the operation.”
Zao depressed a sequence of commands into the touchscreen of the podium where he was standing. The giant flat monitor behind him powered up. The screen showed the Tequesta’s crash site on Altair Nine. A number of red, yellow, and green infrared images of soliders, taken from orbital FLIR data, showed Surgh and his men moving towards the crash site. The overall image of the crash zone was based on telemetry and scanning data from the Xinglong’s computers; assembled from a variety of sensors on the ship.
“Yes sir.” Surgh spoke, his face still dark from grease paint and dirt. “We landed at the insertion coordinates at oh eight twenty ship’s time. It was night on that side of the planet, possibly twenty five thirty hours or so local time. We spread out into a search picket about two hundred meters wide using two man cover rotation. The search was fairly routine and uneventful up until oh two oh seven local when we located the crash site.”
“And please tell me the condition of the crash site again.” Captain Magnuson asked. “I know we have detailed daytime images of the crash site now but please, what was your account of the scene at the time you arrived at the site?”
Three still images appeared at the side of the large vid screen. The still images showed the massive trench the Tequesta had cut into the ground when it crashed. One image was of the trench. Another was of the empty pit at the end of the trench. A three-dimensional model of the Tequesta’s model type, the BAE SST-420 Explorer, rotated slowly in the upper left of the screen.
“We had decent visibility on the crash site with advanced optics.” Surgh noted. “I dispersed my snipers to the tree line for cover as we closed in on the trench. There were no readings of massive fuel loss or any radioactivity. There was no real debris field.”
“The bottom of the BAE Explorer is kind of spade shaped.” Magnuson explained aloud, indirectly to Zao. “It was probably like landing a flats boat on the ground at eight hundred kilometers an hour.”
“Yes sir,” Surgh agreed, “it looks like whoever put that ship down was one hell of a pilot.”
“Please continue, Lieutenant Surgh.” Zao pressed. “You got to the crash site and…”
“Yes sir.” Surgh replied. “We got to the site and found nothing there. We made out the indentation of the final orientation of the craft. We marked where we believed he lowered his rear cargo ramp. We then spotted a pair of footprints leading away from the ramp indent, up from the trench, and out into the jungle.”
“And no other sign of the ship? No debris? No paneling? No spilled fuel or chemicals?”
“We conducted a quick search of the area with the limited spectroscopy built into our tactical goggles. We found trace elements liquid nitrogen in the ground, probably a byproduct of fuel production. The BAE Explorer class vessel is a workhorse in the colonies. The liquid nitrogen was probably a byproduct of its propellant replenishment system.”
“Yeah, it uses supercondenser coils to produce liquid oxygen. Altair Nine has a lot of nitrogen by volume, like Earth, so if they didn’t dump it into their reactor chamber they’d dump the excess.” Magnuson explained. “This usually takes time, though. Much more time than what elapsed from when they crashed to when Surgh’s team arrived.”
“Could the repulse emitters have lifted the ship up on their own?” Zao asked. “Perhaps they have some advanced technology.”
Magnuson shook his head. “No. A ship that big? It w
ould require too much power. Outside of small personal grav cars, I don’t see a large commercial repulse-only vehicle. Even empty that ship weighs, what, 120 metric tons?”
“One hundred fourteen, sir.” A nearby tech corrected him.
“Yeah, there’s no way that has a repulse-only system.” Surgh’s sergeant Zhang noted. A half-second later he remembered military code. “Sir.”
“So, the ship vanished on its own.” Zao continued his questioning to Surgh. “Any idea of where it might have gone?”
“No.” Surgh shook his head blankly. “None! If it HAD gotten off the ground on its own power, we would have seen burn marks on the ground from its conventional thrusters. We didn’t see any of that. The only other option is that a heavy crane picked it up, and we know nothing like that is on Altair Nine. There were no other heavy equipment marks in the ground. And with the rainfall in the area that’s some soft soil. I wouldn’t even run a deuce and a half over that field.”
“You detected no other air vehicles in the area?” Euler ventured the question.
“No.” Magnuson answered him directly. “Surgh’s team didn’t see them. Our atmospheric recon craft didn’t see any and we didn’t see anything from orbit. The planet was on a sensor lockdown. Nothing could have moved on that planet like that without us knowing.”
“With all due respect, sir, that’s not entirely true.” A tech spoke up from the back. “Our orbital ground tracking gets sketchy in the zero to fifteen or twenty meter mark from the ground elevation, especially with the mountain chains around the crash site. There’s a slim probability that someone could have moved the ship without us knowing if one of our atmospheric recon ships were out of position and left a gap in coverage.”
The Captain turned his head towards the tech who had spoken, making the tech visibly apprehensive for a moment, like he had just done something wrong.
“Given that these people are well within our territory without any support I’d call it ‘impossible’ lieutenant.” Magnuson smirked.
“Yes sir.” The tech lieutenant replied obediently.