by Joe Vasicek
That was what they’d told him in his briefing: that if, for whatever reason, he failed to get in position before the Flotilla made its first jump, they would attempt a second one exactly eight hours later. Normally, that would have given him plenty of time, except that this was an equipment failure, not a navigational delay. The second jump would bring the disparate ships of the Flotilla so close to Colkhia that the Imperials would certainly detect them, if indeed they hadn’t already. If Isaac couldn’t get the jump beacon up and running, the battle would be over before it even began.
His hands shook from exhaustion, and his eyes were half-shut and bleary. The timer on his wrist console read “1:46.” He’d been working for more than five hours trying to fix whatever was wrong with the beacon. He’d managed to replace the wiring, but the components inside the beacon itself were shot, and he didn’t know what to do about that. His superiors hadn’t shared any of the jump beacon’s technology with him—that was still a closely guarded secret. He’d managed to get the casing open, but without the schematics, all he could do was tinker. And so far, none of that had worked.
Exhausted, he sat down in the pilot’s chair and buried his head in his hands. The empty seat next to him reminded him all too well that his brother was out there, depending on him to come through.
“Attention Medusa,” the voice of docking control came over the loudspeakers—a woman’s voice, older than the previous controller. “Stand by for final docking maneuvers. Upon arrival, your ship will be boarded by Imperial customs officers.”
“Uh, station control, would it be all right if I could park my ship in orbit for a few hours before docking? My sleep schedule is a bit off from the station’s, and I’d like a chance to rest.”
Silence. His request, though not an unusual one, should have been made when he’d initially jumped into the system. Isaac mentally kicked himself for not thinking of that sooner.
“I don’t see any record that you made that request earlier, Medusa. Why are you making it now?”
“I’m sorry. I thought I’d have more time.”
“Please be advised that all incoming ships must pass a customs check before they are allowed to dock. Any breach of this regulation may result in confiscation of cargo and detainment of passengers or crew.”
“I understand,” said Isaac. I understand that Colkhia is under occupation and needs to be liberated.
“Copy that, Medusa,” said the controller. “Stand by for parking coordinates.”
He sighed in relief. “Thanks, station control. Medusa out.”
The parking coordinates came in a moment later, for a position less than five klicks off the station’s orbit. He plugged them into the nav-computer and set the autopilot to handle the course shift, dropping back into the cabin to continue work on the broken jump beacon.
It wasn’t just the Flotilla depending on him; it was Aaron, too. When they had both just been star wanderers plying the Outworld trade routes together, Isaac had tried to keep them as far from the conflict as possible. His brother was the only shred of family he had left, and the thought of losing him was something he feared more than death. Now, would Aaron die because of his own failure? No—under no circumstances could that be allowed to happen.
His hands shook from exhaustion and his eyes began to droop, but he forced them to stay open and concentrate. For a brief second, though, his thoughts wandered to Aaron, and the next thing he knew, his eyes were shut and the spanner had fallen from his hands. Slapping his face to wake himself up, he stepped back into the cabin to fix a cup of coffee. A quick glance at his wrist console showed that the timer read “1:39.” He was running out of time.
Where are you, Aaron? Isaac wondered as he sat down wearily at the lounge table beside the synthesizer. What are you doing right now? Was his brother just as worried as he was? Or did Aaron trust him to come through?
Isaac sighed and leaned heavily on the table. He couldn’t let his brother down—they’d been through too much together for it all to end like this. He’d fix that beacon, get it up and running, summon the Flotilla for the surprise attack, and beat the Imperials back. In just a day or two, he and Aaron would be laughing together, swapping stories about their exploits, and all of this would seem like a dream. A bad dream.
His head nodded, and his eyes slipped closed. Somewhere off in the distance, the food synthesizer chimed, indicating that his coffee was ready, but he barely heard it. The smell filled the small cabin, and he imagined he was back with his brother, drinking coffee as they swapped stories about the war.
* * * * *
Isaac woke with a start. His neck and back were sore, and his arm was red and covered in drool where his face had leaned against it. In panic, he checked his wrist console.
“0:00.”
His cheeks blanched, and the sweat in the back of his neck ran cold. The timer! How long had he been asleep? Rising unsteadily to his feet, he walked on stiff legs to the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s chair.
Forty-seven minutes. That was how much time had passed since the second jump attempt. He’d slept at the table for over two hours, and now the attack was sure to fail. The Medea’s long-range scanners were already starting to pick up the signatures of numerous ships exiting jumpspace, too scattered to launch an effective attack. Without the jump beacon, the Flotilla would pepper the system so haphazardly that the Imperial warships would have no trouble picking them off. It was over. He had failed.
Panic gave way to shock and a deep and utter sense of dread. For several minutes, Isaac stared at the screens, unable to bring himself to do anything.
The Imperial warships were orbiting just above him, but they’d already broken formation. No doubt they were spreading out to position themselves for the attack, which they knew by now was coming. The battleship just sat there, though, unmoved from its orbit. In some strange way, it seemed to be waiting for something.
As Isaac watched, the battleship flashed and disappeared from the scanners. Realization hit him with all the fierce intensity of a solar flare: The Starfire had jumped out to launch a counterattack. With the Flotilla scattered, the Imperials could pick their targets at leisure and crush them one by one. Not even the Aegis could stand alone against a warship the likes of the GIS Starfire—the Outworld ships were no match for Imperial firepower.
The departure of the Starfire snapped Isaac out of his shock. His mission had ended in failure—now, all he could do was abort and regroup. Broken or not, the jump beacon was a valuable piece of top secret technology that could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. He had to do all that he could to ensure that the Imperials didn’t catch him.
And as for Aaron …
His hands still trembling slightly, Isaac checked the energy reserves on the jump drives. They were charged only at sixty percent, the reactor powering at a reduced rate to keep from arousing suspicion at the station. Still, it was enough to put some distance between himself and the system. He set the target coordinates for a point a hundred light-hours toward the center of the New Pleiades and put his fingers on the jump switch.
At that moment, something curious on the scanners caught his eye. It was a distress beacon, transmitting from an escape pod where the Starfire had just been. Isaac frowned. Why would the battleship jettison a pod just before going into combat? It didn’t make sense—unless the person inside was an escapee of some kind. And if they were an escapee, they were probably friends of the Resistance.
Isaac checked the pod’s trajectory. Its altitude was falling, but its heading was very close to his own. None of the frigates was in any position to intercept, and to his knowledge, the station had no ships ready to dispatch in order to retrieve the pod. If he fired up the sublight engines, he could be there in a mere twenty minutes, long before anyone else could.
He put his hand on the throttle and hesitated. Was this really a good idea? His mission had failed—his only objective now was to get back to friendly space. He had to keep the jump beacon from fa
lling into Imperial hands, at all costs. Diverting from that objective to pick up a stray escape pod was dangerous.
Then again, what if someone important was in that pod? What if this was his chance to redeem himself? He didn’t care about demotions or reprimands, but he hated to let anyone down. Perhaps this was his chance to turn things around so that his mission wasn’t a complete loss.
Besides, it was what his brother would do.
With a deep breath, he threw the throttle forward and pulled up on the flight stick. The Medea came to life almost instantly, the roar of the engines sounding through the bulkheads as the station and other spaceships began to fall away. The comms screen lit up with an incoming transmission only a few seconds later. It was docking control.
“Medusa, what are you doing? Cut your engines and maintain position at once.”
Isaac nosed the Medea into its proper course and blasted away, the sudden acceleration pushing him back against his seat.
“Medusa, do you copy? Cease and desist, or—”
“I’m sorry, docking control, but I can’t do that.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Medusa, if you do not reverse course and maintain a holding pattern about the station, we will be forced to—”
Isaac shut the channel off. The controllers were all tedious conversationalists anyways. He checked the reserves on his jump drive. Still enough to get him out. The escape pod would alter the ship’s mass, but not by enough to throw them too far off course.
He checked the scanners and swore. A cloud of tiny red points was swarming out of the nearest frigate. Those would be fighter drones, deploying to intercept him. The Imperials might not be able to retrieve the pod before he did, but they could still launch an attack. This was going to take some fancy flying.
The moment the engine burn was complete, he opened the cargo bay doors and activated the unloading arm. The Imperial drones would get to him before he could dock with the escape pod, but he could still nab it as if it were a piece of space debris. As long as the pod was attached to the unloading arm when the jump drive engaged, the two of them would jump out together. But getting into a parallel orbit so that he could safely grab onto it would be tricky.
Or would it? The nav-computers on escape pods were generally easy to override. As long as the person inside didn’t try to block him, he could issue commands to the pod as if he were piloting it remotely. If he could get his nav-computer could connect, bringing the two ships alongside each other should be no problem at all.
Isaac transmitted the override request and set about fine-tuning his trajectory. The nav-computer raced through the calculations, asking for dozens of variables that had to be supplied manually. He could barely keep up with them all and still manage to pilot the ship. If only his brother were there, things would be a lot easier.
ERROR, the comm display flashed. OVERRIDE DENIED.
He frowned and sent in another request. Decelerating to match the pod’s current trajectory would steal three—no, four and a half precious minutes. Out of the corner of his eye, he checked the drones. They were closing in on him fast—much too fast to attempt the maneuver on his own. Working quickly, he sent another override request and immediately went back to the calculations. They were almost finished—
ERROR. OVERRIDE DENIED.
“Come on,” he muttered, sending in a third request. “Do you want me to save you or not?”
The calculations were more or less complete, though the variables kept changing so much that Isaac had to work furiously to keep up. If the pod didn’t allow him access soon, he’d have to abandon the attempt and—
OVERRIDE GRANTED.
“Yes!” he said, pumping his fist. He fixed on a flight plan and transmitted the plans. On the scanners, the escape pod altered its trajectory to converge with the Medea’s.
It wasn’t over yet, though—not by a long shot. The controls for the unloading arm were separate from the flight controls. Without his brother to help out, Isaac would have to set the ship to autopilot and control the arm from Aaron’s chair. After checking the scanners to get an ETA on the drones, he set the jump drive to a timer and switched chairs.
The scanners zoomed in to show the converging trajectories. He toggled the main screen to show the video feed from the end of the unloading arm. A wall of blackness met his view, with only a few distant specks for stars.
He eyed the screen nervously. Where was that pod? Shouldn’t it be in view by now? The sweat from his palms greased the control stick, making it slippery.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered, tapping his foot nervously against the floor.
Just when he started to wonder if he’d made a mistake with the calculations, he saw it—a tiny point of light, moving quickly against the backdrop of space and growing larger. At first, it looked like it was coming in for a collision course, but then it slowed and pulled up right alongside the Medea. It was a bit smaller than he was expecting, but flat enough that the claw on the unloading arm should be able to grasp it. If he could just—
A horrible grating noise sounded through the bulkheads, and the whole ship shook. He glanced down at the scanners and paled. The drones had caught up to him. An explosion rocked the ship, setting off a cascade of alarms, while lasers and plasma bursts flashed outside the window. The Medea was no match for them. If he didn’t—
“Hang on!” he shouted, as if the person in the escape pod could hear him. With the alarms blaring in his ears, he brought the arm forward and locked onto the pod with the claw.
“Gotcha!”
Before the drones could come back for another pass, he leaped from his seat and threw the switch to initiate jump. The bulkheads began to hum, even as another explosion threw him from his chair. The humming grew in pitch, and his stomach turned inside out, sending a wave of nausea through him. Before he could get up, the sensation passed. He was through.
“Stars of Earth,” he swore, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He stood up and checked the alarms. One of the sublight engines was down and the inside of the cargo bay was shot to pieces, but his vital systems were all still functional. Of course, it would take a spacewalk to survey the full extent of the damage, but that wasn’t urgent.
Retrieving the escape pod, though—that certainly was.
A Runaway Found
Reva gasped and tried very hard to stop her hands from shaking. The horrible gut-wrenching feeling passed, though a warm pool of wetness against the cushions marked where she’d peed a little. With the cushioning pressed up all against her, it was hard not to feel panicky or claustrophobic in the tiny escape pod. More than anything else, she wanted to get out.
The tiny screen in front of her showed the ship that had captured her. It was a small cargo ship from the looks of it, a bit beat-up but otherwise in decent shape. A glance at the scanners showed that they were no longer in the same system as before. Planet, sun, station, starships—everything that had been there just a moment ago was gone.
Reva stared at the starship and took a deep breath. Who exactly had captured her, and what had he been running from? If indeed it was just a he—she doubted that more than one person could live in a ship like that. And in order to jump past the speed of light, it would have to be a starship, just like the ones that had brought her great great grandparents across the starry sea to Anuva.
The engines engaged, pushing her back gently against the cushions that encased her. Whoever was in that ship, they’d taken control of her escape pod, overriding her own piloting controls. It was just as well, though. She doubted she could fly the pod on her own, and she was almost certainly running out of air. Better to surrender control and let her unknown rescuer guide her in.
Though once she was on board, surrendering was the last thing she’d do.
* * * * *
Isaac rose wearily from his chair in the cockpit and stepped into the Medea’s tiny cabin. Even with his accidental nap back at Colkhia, he was still exhausted enough to collapse.
There was no time to rest, though. The escape pod had just been retracted into his ship, and its passenger was no doubt anxious to get on board.
The chutes for the Medea’s escape pods were in the back near the docking airlock. Isaac had gotten rid of them long ago to boost the ship’s mass allotment—besides, it wasn’t like they would have done any good in deep space. The wall panels slid open to reveal the chutes, one on each side of the narrow corridor. Isaac opened the one on the right, just behind the locker for the EVA suits. Isaac switched on the lighting strips that ran along the sides of the chute and leaned in. He couldn’t see much in the darkness, but he could tell that the hatch was open. A rustling noise confirmed that someone was trying to get out. The chutes were designed for rapid deployment, so climbing up them backwards would prove difficult without help.
“Here,” he said, reaching his hand down. “Stick your foot into the chute, and I’ll haul you out.”
The escapee didn’t respond, but the rustling got louder. It was followed by a low moan, as if someone were trapped and straining hard to break free. Isaac stretched out his hand, but the person was just out of reach.
“Hello, can you hear me? Stick out your leg, and I’ll—”
A hand grabbed his wrist. Somehow, the escapee had managed to turn around in the narrow space. With his free hand, Isaac grabbed one of the hand holds and hauled the person out.
“There you go. Easy does it. Easy—”
His voice trailed off as the escapee climbed out of the chute and into the full light. She was a young woman about his age, with dark olive skin and not a stitch of clothing on her body. She was covered with dark brown henna tattoos which did nothing to cover her nakedness. He blinked and swallowed nervously.
“Uh, hello there. Who are you, and, uh, what are you …”