by Drew Cordell
Fen consolidated the available data from the passive check we received from the new ship’s standardized data signature. “Just the one—named Ax3l5. If I try to pull more information from their ship with an active check, there is a chance they will detect us and we lose the advantage of being hidden.”
Gwen seemed to consider this. “If we jump while they’re here, Dalthaxia’s going to be able to place us within one standard jump of this location based off the jump capabilities they believe we have.”
Gwen compared our current location to Vrenn, the strange system housing Dark Eternity’s station, and our current location somewhere between the two. We were far enough away from anything notable—some insignificant neutral stations excluded—that was a place of interest on the galaxy map of Eternity Online. Checking the wormhole’s location, it appeared to be just as remote as our current location. “If we’re revealed and we jump, I don’t think it compromises our location. The wormhole is still within the standard jump capabilities of most ships from Vrenn. That said, the wormhole will put us closer to Vrenn, and I’m sure Dalthaxian fleets are scouring the surrounding area and searching for jump signatures.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked, unsure of the best way to proceed. We could wait it out, but mining barges like this one could mine for days at a time before they would have to leave to unload their ore haul. What if more barges showed up or this was the start of a more complex mining operation with multiple parties? More ships in the area meant a higher chance we would be detected.
Gwen studied me. “I think you’d better go put on your EVA suit and move one of the jump drive refueling tanks to the airlock so we can be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Sorry I made you take off your armor earlier,” she said, giving me a sly smile.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, smiling back. “Patch me in with remote comms, I’ll be on standby for my EVA.”
“Woah. Are we not going to talk about that?” Brandon asked, seeming stunned by what Gwen had said.
“We’ll talk later, buddy,” I replied, suppressing a smile and already running back to the living space where my EVA suit was waiting for me before Brandon could respond.
Gwen wasn’t shy or embarrassed about what had happened earlier—and that was fine with me. I didn’t have any regrets. I was sure Brandon would have a lot to say about it later.
Getting into my EVA suit in Eternity Online was a lot easier than the lengthy process I had to go through on Tiyvan IV on a daily basis. In less than two minutes, I was suited up, checking to make sure the magnetic lock on my blaster pistol was secure and that my helmet was twisted into place. The vents along the armored panels of my suit opened, pumping fresh air from Ether Rogue’s cabin into my helmet without the need of internal life support.
“Any movement?” I asked my friends as I moved to the null-G tunnel that would take me to the cargo hold including the two massive cargo containers anchored to Ether Rogue’s blocky frame on either side.
Brandon answered as I floated down the tunnel toward my destination. “Yeah, they moved a few more kilometers away and deployed two mining drones—maybe to prospect. The mining barge is using mining lasers to extract ore from asteroids. Fen doesn’t think they’ve seen us. I have about a million questions for you and Gwen later.”
He would talk my ear off eventually, but for now, he was focused on the task at hand: preparing to gun down any and everything that moved in a moment’s notice—that was good.
Gravity returned as I stepped out of the transport tunnel and into the entrance of the cargo hold. It was massive, many times the size of Exowurm’s. From loading cargo on Vrenn and again at Dark Eternity’s station, I had a good idea of where everything was located. Now, the most important thing was to make sure nothing had broken free of its restraints during our last jump.
I quickly moved through the main hold, checking the cargo restraints and passing into the starboard shipping container where I knew the jump-drive fuel canisters were located. “Brandon, I’m on standby to move the fuel canister to the airlock. What’s the plan?”
Gwen answered. “We’re going to jump and make a show of it. This mining barge is going to have plenty of opportunities to identify us in retrospect, but they’re not going to know which direction we jumped. I’m turning off the aGrav in the cargo hold now. Move the fuel pod and secure it next to the starboard airlock for immediate refueling once we complete the jump. Let us know when the fuel canister is ready and you’re all strapped in.”
“On it,” I said, floating from the floor as the aGrav dissipated. Without gravity, moving the 250-kilogram fuel pod was easy, and I was able to hold it in front of me and float toward one of the starboard airlocks with the cargo tethers and everything I would need to prepare for the jump and be ready to complete my EVA.
Once inside the airlock, I secured the fuel pod first, strapping it to the harness on my suit with a two-meter tether, then I strapped myself in so I wouldn’t get thrown around during the jump. Inertial dampeners within the rest of the ship would make sure I lived through the jump, but it would be harsher than it would in the flight cabin. “I’m good to go. Make the jump when you’re ready.”
“Dropping the signature beacon and jumping out, hold on,” Gwen said.
I watched through the viewport of the airlock as Gwen coaxed Ether Rogue from its hiding place behind a large asteroid, bringing us into the open with the ship set in analog mode. A small beacon—one encoded with Ether Rogue’s encrypted ship signature—would detonate once we completed our jump, letting the mining barge know exactly who we were after we were already long gone. If the trick went off correctly, it would make it look like we had jumped to the beacon rather than from it, effectively masking our jump to our new location.
Pressure washed over me as familiar blue light circled Ether Rogue. Time and space folded as we jumped through the stars, coming to a sudden stop that pulled me against my restraints with great force. Thankfully, outside from a little soreness, I would be fine.
“We’re clear, Kyle. Looks like you're still breathing—that’s good,” Gwen reported. “Fen is studying the wormhole now and we’ll have information for you shortly. Try to be quick with your EVA, that was a big jump and someone is bound to see the fallout, even though the beacon should have helped us mask it.”
“Got it,” I replied, running one final check on my suit before draining the pressure in the airlock and opening the outer door.
I pulled the fuel pod behind me, grabbing the handholds along Ether Rogue’s hull as I pulled myself to the underbelly of the ship. I was doing the EVA without the safety of making sure I was tethered to the ship at every moment. If my hands slipped, I'd have to use the directional momentum controls on my suit to make it back to the ship, and that would cost even more time.
I stole a glance to the front of Ether Rogue, seeing the wormhole in the distance. It didn’t look like what I expected a wormhole to look like; it wasn’t naturally occurring. Green light shimmered from thin, film-like energy projected from four geometric constructs, almost like some kind of portal. It was big, and it didn’t look like Gwen’s ship would have any problem passing through.
Once in place, I deployed the fuel injector hose from the pod, opening the magnetic panel on Gwen’s ship that would let me twist the hose into place. I pulled the lever on the bottom of the ship to initiate the fueling process as the hose clicked into place. The fuel pod was very simplistic and wasn’t equipped with any electronics. Once connected, the ship would use a negative vacuum gradient to pull the fuel in, making it a fast process without the chance for many errors.
I checked the timer in my AIVO overlay: just over three minutes since I had left the airlock. Gwen was still piloting us toward the wormhole, but we were moving at a constant velocity and weren’t accelerating, making my EVA a lot easier and less dangerous.
“Kyle, bring the fuel pod back into the ship once you’re done fueling. We don’t want Dalthaxia to know that we had the capability
to jump again if they trace our location and figure out we were here,” Brandon said. “Assuming this wormhole portal thing goes away once we pass through it.”
An LED light next to Ether Rogue’s external fueling hatch glowed green, indicating that the fuel tank was full. “Got it, I’ll bring the pod in with me. Fueling is complete, can you confirm that we’re good to go?” I asked.
“Jump drive is at one hundred percent,” Gwen confirmed. “Get inside and we’ll see what’s waiting for us on the other side of this wormhole.”
38
Rechecking my fuel pod tether, I pulled myself along the bottom of Ether Rogue with ease, moving toward the open airlock. This new suit was better than the one I had been using before in terms of EVA work, and the extra armor, O2 capacity, and damage reduction couldn’t be ignored.
Once I was back inside and had secured the nearly empty fuel pod to its resting place in the cargo hold, Gwen wasted no time in firing the ship’s burners, moving us toward the wormhole as I hurried through the last responsibilities of my EVA. Gwen was pushing the limit but seemed to be making sure she wasn’t accelerating to the point where I would have an impossible time moving through the ship.
I joined the others in the flight cabin, buckling into my flight chair and watching as the wormhole grew in our field of vision. The image was magnified across our viewport, highlighting the ancient-looking constructs powering the portal to the beyond. “This is it. Be ready for anything,” I said. I wished there was something more I could do rather than just report the status of Ether Rogue’s systems. But the reality was that this ship didn’t have the same infrastructure as Exowurm. If we got into a space fight with anything significant, our only advantage would be that we had such an ace pilot behind the flight sticks.
“Let’s hope this works,” Gwen said, tossing me the map fragment and slowing us with a burst of power from the front-facing thrusters. “Do you have to enter a passcode or anything, or do you think we’re good?” she asked me, apparently not wanting to fly into the wormhole without getting my best judgment of the situation.
I studied the map fragment, searching for hidden messages, some kind of subtle prompt, or anything else, but there was nothing. The constructs maintaining the wormhole portal didn’t shift, and the color of the wormhole itself remained constant as we approached. It was flat, one-dimensional, and didn’t reveal anything about what was waiting for us beyond it. Everything up until this point had led us to believe the map fragment was the thing that would grant us access to this wormhole. We had reason to put hope into that, but we also had to prepare for the possibility that we might be followed in by other ships that would want to steal this opportunity away from us at any cost.
“I’m not getting anything else. I think we should be good. I’ll be on standby if I need to do anything,” I said.
“Okay, this is it,” Gwen said. Her voice was tight, and she tensed as she eased the main thruster lever forward, accelerating us toward the wormhole. “Be ready for anything, including an unfriendly welcome party.”
The wormhole grew, swallowing Ether Rogue in a void of blackness. We were accelerating, and dark blue accents appeared in the shadowy tunnel surrounding us, crackling out with orange electricity as the bolts grasped out and encapsulated our hull. Gwen toggled the front lights on the ship, but the tunnel of darkness swallowed the light less than a meter away from the powerful bulbs. The ship began to rattle as the forces tightened their grasp on us.
“Shields are down!” I called out, but the violent rattling of Ether Rogue all but drowned out my words. The wormhole—whatever was happening—had crippled our primary defenses. I could only hope the electrical surges wouldn’t damage our hull or the systems on or in the ship.
Gwen struggled against the pull of the dark vortex and the increasingly violent electricity leapfrogging across the hull, trying to pull us out of this frenzied trajectory, but its grasp was just too strong. She cursed, making the conscious decision to turn off the shield ignition primer so we wouldn't waste capacitor power or risk overvoltage damage to any other systems.
Flashes of green lightning ignited in the backdrop, bleeding brilliant light through the cloudy tunnel pulling us forward. Massive rounded shapes hovered beyond the tunnel, ancient and mysterious, almost life-like. Wet droplets started to pound on the viewport of Ether Rogue, blotting out our vision as the ship seemed to lurch and fall several meters, violently shuddering from the change in cadence. The sudden fall intensified the rattling and number of warning alarms blaring.
“Shit! Hold on, we’re in atmosphere!” Gwen yelled as more alarms started to blare. The tunnel was gone, and Gwen had some control of Ether Rogue, but the torrential rain was getting stronger, and louder, solid impacts rang out as spheres of hail pounded into the viewport, overpowering everything else.
The front lights were working again, but we were flying through dark, blacked-out clouds cackling with powerful, blinding arcs of green lightning and booming thunder. We could hear the thunder, there was no way we were still in the void of space—Gwen was right.
Gwen was decelerating us, but the radars and flight systems were useless in a storm this severe. We were going in blind, and Ether Rogue’s sensors couldn’t detect our current altitude or what was waiting beneath us on the surface of this strange planet through the violence of the storm.
Was escaping this place our trial? Or had simply holding the map fragment been enough to bring us all the way to the location of the temple?
“What can we do?” I asked Gwen, wanting to be helpful. There was nothing obvious we could be doing to help Gwen as we rocketed through the storm, knowing we might slam into the face of a cliff or a bolt of lightning could strike and send us cratering to a painful death. It was a grim thought, but it was rooted deeply in logic.
“Try to find our location on the galaxy map. Brandon, Fen, be ready to gun anything down,” she said between gritted teeth. “Dammit!”
I tried to coax Ether Rogue’s AI to accomplish the info pull request while it struggled with everything else, but the query was spitting out nonsense at me, failing to give a standardized coordinate that I could place on the galactic map. The storm, while it hadn’t disabled us entirely, was really screwing with the ship’s electronics, and we were picking up strong, shifting magnetic fields indicative of a volatile celestial body nearby.
Gwen pulled up on the flight sticks, suddenly dodging away to avoid a titanic fork of blinding lightning that ignited the black sky as the wind buffeted our ship. I was forced back into my flight chair during the evasive maneuver, biting down on my gums hard and tasting blood.
The maneuver worked, but Gwen was still having trouble slowing us down, and it was clear that Ether Rogue’s structure was paying the price for flying as fast as we were through atmosphere. Clocking in at over 6,000 kilometers per hour, our current velocity was going to kill us if Gwen couldn’t get it under control. It was a delicate situation. Too much deceleration and the G-forces would kill us all or we would lose control of the starship and crash. Too little deceleration and the bulkheads were going to shred apart with the air resistance and violence of the storm.
“Dammit!” Gwen yelled. “Flip back to analog! Something is really screwing with the AI and electronics, they’re only making it worse. Kyle, you need to be ready to go patch anything in the engine room if it breaks down.”
I complied despite the growing dread of the situation, flipping the switch for Gwen to shut off and shield the ship’s AI. I put my trust in her, knowing she was going to do her best to get us out of this mess. I was thankful it wasn’t me flying in this nightmare. I was ready to fix anything if needed but wasn’t looking forward to maneuvering through the ship when the storm was throwing us around like this.
The overlaid graphics on the viewport went dark as the manual instruments kicked into action. I couldn’t see anything through the rain, hail, and lightning, even as the wiper blades worked at full capacity, trying to scoop away the cascadin
g water.
Gwen was in intense concentration, trying to manually discern our altitude while slowing our velocity. I wasn’t hopeful for a smooth landing, but we needed to minimize the damage to Ether Rogue or we might become trapped on this strange planet, unable to return to civilized parts of Eternity Online.
Our velocity was creeping down, dropping just below 4,000 kilometers per hour, but there was no way to judge the structural strain on Ether Rogue other than by feel. The metallic shuddering was only getting worse, even as we slowed. A violent sideswiping gale slammed into the freighter, pulling us out of our trajectory and trying to redirect our forward momentum to the back half of the ship. Gwen fought it, but something had to give, and she let us fall quickly before punching the underside thrusters and correcting the gut-wrenching trajectory. The shuddering of the ship diminished as we pierced through the wall of dark clouds.
There was a clearing in the black storm, a circle of peace and calm. Green light from a distant star bled through the upper atmosphere of the planet, illuminating a clearing of circular obsidian-like black stone several kilometers long and wide standing out amongst a sea of raging black water. Smaller pillars of rock, or metal, stuck out amongst the clearing, leading to a massive pyramid built from the same material, dark and sleek from light rainfall bleeding through the dense walls of the hurricane.
The map fragment I hadn’t realized I was squeezing so tightly vibrated in my hand, the engraved runes glowing a brilliant green. It was as much indication as I needed. “This is it! Put us down,” I shouted.
Without the onslaught of the hurricane, Gwen was able to decelerate us with a lot more control, bringing Ether Rogue to a stop mid-air with the ventral thrusters before starting our descent. We were at least 10,000 meters above the surface, and the pyramid-like structure in the clearing of rock was massive, even from this height. Brandon and Fen swept the targeting optics of their blaster turrets over the surface of the temple, scanning for enemy fighters or enemy forces. Thankfully, they didn’t come.