Zyla’s secrets were out. She’d given them to me for safekeeping. I was a little stunned, to be honest.
And then she said, “Someone is methodically destroying Zenthian planets, and they’ve only just started.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because the two planets hit were the two closest on a direct flight path from the Belt. They’re moving inward, toward Zenthia Actual. And they are directing their drone ships from the other side of the Belt.”
“Aliens,” I said, tasting fear on the word for the first time in my life.
I’d grown up with aliens. They weren’t all bad. If you discounted the Claxians and most people did.
But this was different. This was what my great-grandfather must have felt when the first Zenthian ship entered New Earth’s orbit.
“Aliens,” Zy agreed.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter Fourteen
Our power reserves were low. Too low. We weren’t going to make it.
“Something else is draining us and I can’t fluxing find it, Cap’n,” Odo growled from his position on the gel floor half inside one of the conduits for the main FTL engines. “I’ve just about torn apart every section of this ship, and I’m coming up blank on all counts.”
“Can we still make the destination?” I knew the answer, but it had to be said.
“We’ll make the jump point exit, but we won’t be able to cross the expanse to your hidey-hole. Even if it is there.”
Odo didn’t believe I had a hidden location in the middle of nowhere. The jump point we were about to use was an ancient New Earth one, placed there by Aquilla a couple of centuries ago. It didn’t come up on any of the jump point registries.
As far as I knew, none of the other species we’d shared jump tech with knew of its existence either. It was one of those secrets that kept your civilisation safe. Jump points were our entry card into the intragalactic community. Until then, they’d been using an unstable space folding technique that they soon abandoned. Now everyone used jump points to get across vast distances. And consequently didn’t lose 5% of their fleets.
It allowed us to enter the larger space community with a modicum of respect. Without our jump point technology, I feared it wouldn’t have been as smooth sailing. Those Zeniths who arrived in New Earth’s orbit way back when had been packing a hell of a lot of weapons.
This particular jump point was only known to a few within New Earth’s military as well. And those few were all artificial intelligences and my great-grandfather.
It hadn’t been used in half a decade. I was hoping that was still the case, but now, if it was still the case, we might be screwed. There’d be no one on the other side of the jump point exit to catch us. We’d come in ballistic without enough power to slow down.
At least there wasn’t much in the system for us to hit.
I scrubbed my face.
“Activate artificial intelligence,” I instructed the computer.
Odo stopped what he was doing and stared up at me with wide eyes.
“Hello, Captain Jameson,” the Basic said.
“We meet again,” I murmured.
The Basic said nothing, probably wondering why I was putting on an evil bad guy tone of voice.
“Self-diagnostic,” I said in a normal tone of voice.
“Self-diagnostic running.”
Odo pushed himself into an upright position and started packing away his tools.
“We don’t have any choice,” I said, even though he hadn’t offered an argument.
“I guess not.” He was angry he hadn’t been able to find the source of the drain. And probably worried the Basic was about to screw us.
I was too. But we needed to get to our destination. No one would stumble upon us out here in the middle of nowhere. And even if we did send a communications probe back through the jump point, who did we send it to?
Malcolm? Zenthia Actual? The ZNA?
My great-grandfather and Corvus; Cassi’s Originator?
Yeah, nah. Not doing any of that. The Basic was our only chance of surviving this.
It wasn’t lost on me that had we gone back to Chi Virginis; we would have exited the jump point by now and be close to docking. Well within the power drainage’s parameters for reaching safety.
Instead, I’d sent us off into the Black without a safety net. This was all on me.
“Self-diagnostic complete,” the Basic advised. “No anomalies detected.”
Odo threw a spanner into his tool box. It landed with a resounding clang. Yeah, I wasn’t confident the Basic was being truthful with us either. But I had to hope, Malcolm wanted his son to live. So, I was going with that.
Comms couldn’t be sent during jump tunnel flight, so the Basic couldn’t send out an emergency beacon to Chi. But it could help us find some power.
“The ship is compromised,” I told it. “We won’t reach our destination. Diagnose a solution that allows maximum chances of survival for the entire crew.”
“Assessing the ship’s systems. Standby.”
“I don’t like this, Cap,” Odo growled.
“Neither do I. But I want to live.”
Odo stormed off toward the far end of engineering; where he kept his tools and could oversee what the Basic was doing on a vid-screen. I followed more slowly behind him.
We were an hour away from making the jump point exit. Two hours away from safety. And we had power for only one more hour with the systems set to basic life support and flight only. Even if we cut the engines the moment we popped back out of exo-space, we’d still not have enough juice to use positional thrusters for navigation. We’d fly right past the hidden base. Close but not close enough.
We could all be sitting in a nice cell on Chi Virginis about now if only I had done what Malcolm had planned for us.
I snorted softly and came up alongside Odo at his terminal.
The Basic was rapidly sweeping the ship’s systems, highlighting in flashing red the places where we were compromised.
I counted thirteen in the ten seconds I’d stood there.
“Flux me,” Odo whispered.
“Well,” I said, “that confirms sabotage. Those errors are too evenly spaced to be randomly occurring.”
“We showed him, though, didn’t we, Cap’n?”
I looked at my engineer and saw the smirk. A huff of breath left me in a laugh. And then we were both laughing, wiping tears from our faces, and sucking in heaving breaths. It was cathartic, and I hadn’t thought I’d ever have the chance to laugh freely with Odo ever again.
He hadn’t forgiven me for Ceres A. But he was still family.
That’s what family did. Loved you despite your mistakes.
“Possible solution found,” the Basic announced.
We wiped the last of our tears away and blinked at the screen. I sighed. It wanted to put us to sleep. Then confine life support to the med bay only on a minimal setting. The rest of the ship would turn to ice. FTL engines would be offline. Impulse would get us where we needed to go, but it meant we had to trust the ship’s AI.
“No way,” Odo snarled.
I said nothing. Just stared at the screen, trying to see if there was a way around it. There wasn’t. The Basic had even considered the oxygen in the EVA suits. It planned to drain them so it could keep us alive.
Alive but unconscious.
I shook my head.
“Start preparations,” I instructed.
“Captain!”
“Odo,” I said, not looking my engineer in the eye. “We don’t have the time to come up with another plan. We’ve got ten minutes before this one becomes impossible. Get to the med bay. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Cap,” he said softly and walked off.
“All hands,” I said over the ship-wide comm. “This is the captain. Head to the med bay ASAP.”
I rechecked the Basic’s solution on the vid-screen. I didn’t have time to dissect it completely, but I spent five minutes m
aking sure it wasn’t about to flux us sideways. Marvin would be in the med bay with us. He’d be breathing the same air as us. That was something.
But the cocktail of drugs the AI wanted to administer could be different for us than for him, and Doc wasn’t here to tell me otherwise.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe through the guilt and heartache. And then I pushed it aside and made my way to the med bay, my heart thundering inside my chest.
Everyone was waiting. Odo looked angry. Zyla looked emotionless. Marvin looked confused. I stepped into the med bay and sealed the door.
“Start shutdown sequence on all unnecessary systems outside of the med bay,” I told the Basic.
“Shutdown in progress.”
“Is there no other way, Kael?” Zyla asked.
“None that I can come up with fast enough. But I’m open to suggestions.” I looked at the Mutt when I said that. If anyone had an ace up their sleeve, it’d be Malcolm’s son.
He said nothing.
“Prepare medications,” I said softly. “Zy, you take the med bed. We’ll find spots on the gel floor.”
She didn’t argue, which meant she was aware of how hard this was for me. She was acquiescing because she thought we were fluxed and I was once again bringing the axe down on all of our heads. And she was letting me because she trusted me.
I realised I loved her more then than I had ever loved another being.
“This is so fluxed,” Odo muttered, laying himself down on the gel floor.
I took the spot closest to the door. It was a ridiculously useless chivalrous action. If the rest of my crew and I were dead when Malcolm boarded to rescue his son, then he’d simply step over my body to reach him.
I couldn’t protect them, and that was the hardest thing to acknowledge that I had ever had to.
I lay down and waited for the Basic to advise its status. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Medications are ready, Captain.”
“Lay in course for destination and lockdown,” I said. “Jameson, K, beta-charlie-foxtrot-9-9-3.” The AI wasn’t Cassi, but Zyla had placed Cassiopeia-level encryption in the system. As much as she could without our third-gen to guide her, anyway. My codes should work.
Hopefully.
“Destination laid in and locked down, Captain.”
“Administer meds.”
The gel floor and walls morphed as the AI brought needle-less syringes toward our veins.
The gel walls were New Earth’s design, too, I thought randomly. Ironic that it would be those that took us out in the end.
“Wake us when we get there,” I said to the AI as the syringe pressed against the skin on the side of my neck.
“Acknowledged.”
I wanted to say something profound and heartfelt to the crew. I wanted to tell Zyla that she meant more to me than she should have. I wanted to tell Odo he was like a brother to me and that I was sorry.
“See you on the other side,” was all I said. Hardly inspiring.
“Cap’n,” Odo mumbled, the meds already taking him under.
“An honour, sir,” Zyla supplied, still sounding unaffected by the meds, but I could see her head lolling up on the med bed.
My last image of the med bay was Marvin looking up at the gel ceiling, hands linked together casually over his barrel chest, his eyes open wide.
I’d fluxed up.
We were done for.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Dreams assailed me. Nuclear bombs blasting holes the size of New Texas into planets. The screams of the Zenith locals as they were immolated. Zyla calling out for me to save her. Doc accusing me of blowing him to bits. Cassi telling me it was time to wake.
I blinked open my eyes and sat up too quickly. The room spun. My head throbbed. Someone was puking up their breakfast, and I almost joined them.
“We have reached our destination,” the Basic advised.
Yeah, but which one?
I rolled over onto my hands and knees and panted through the nausea. My eyes blinked back spots, but still, the room looked too fuzzy. But I recognised the med bed and Odo’s form off to the side. He wasn’t yet moving. It was Marvin vomiting.
Somehow that settled my heartbeat. Or maybe the concoction he’d received was the good one, and we were all meant be upchucking.
I crawled toward the closest vid-screen and hauled it down to my level on the gel floor. My fingers felt fat and too slow, but I eventually managed to lay in a command to show me the external cameras.
Outside the port side of the ship was a dark rock face. And the docking extension that led into the hidden base I had directed the Basic to take us to. We’d made it.
I fell back on my arse and tried not to cry.
“ETA to docking completion,” I mumbled.
“T-minus two minutes to acceptable atmospheric conditions within the ship. Docking has been completed. You are expected.”
Expected?
“Do we have power?”
“Power has been partially restored via hard dock facility.”
“Scan the region. Show me any threats.”
“Scanning.”
I watched as the Basic performed a thorough scan of the system, searching for heat signatures, radiation levels, and all manner of signals that would likely indicate we were not alone. Not even a drone showed up on the screen, which was good because I wasn’t sure how far those alien drones from beyond the Belt had managed to get into the known systems.
I waited until the life sign scan had completed and then allowed myself to breathe again when it showed up negative outside of the base.
“Connect me to the Base,” I instructed. “Jameson, K, beta-charlie-foxtrot-9-9-3.”
“Voice recognition accepted. Standby.”
It wouldn’t get us inside. I needed to be there to open the hatch. But it would allow us to connect to the Base’s systems after it ran a bio-signature scan on the vessel.
“Connection denied.”
I blinked.
“Try again.”
“Standby.”
I waited as I watched Odo stir and Zyla sit up, holding her head in her hands. And Marvin finish throwing up the last of his stomach contents. The gel floor whipped the vomitus away. We must have had power to spare, then.
So, why wasn’t the Base connecting with us? It clearly was resupplying power and a breathable atmosphere.
“Connection denied.”
Damn it. Something wasn’t right.
“Keep an active scan on our surroundings,” I told the AI.
“Scans active.”
“Notify me of anomalies immediately upon detection.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Give me a stim.”
“Your body has received the recommended upper limit of stimulations for the current suggested time period.”
“Override. Jameson, K, beta-charlie-foxtrot-9-9-3.”
“That is not advised.”
“Override. Jameson, K, beta-charlie-foxtrot-9-9-3
“Acknowledged.”
The stim hit me with the force of a freight train. I grunted and then landed on my side, staring at Odo’s blinking eyes as he studied me from his own sideways position on the gel floor.
“Doing alright there, Cap’n?” he slurred.
“Peachy,” I growled and pushed myself upright.
“You’re an idiot, Kael,” Zyla told me.
“Noted.”
“Why do I feel like crap?” Marvin asked.
“Because the Basic AI your father gave us is crap,” I told him. “But it did save our lives.”
“We made it?” Zy asked. She was the only one of the rest of the crew sitting upright. Those nanites would have been working overtime to clear her system.
I really had to get me some of them.
“Yeah. We made it, Nav,” I said and tried to stand up. It took a couple of goes, but I was determined to be the first one standing.
Wobbly and weak,
my heart thundering away unchecked inside, but I did it.
“Huh,” Zyla said, stepping off the med bed as if she was five by five. “I did not think we would survive that.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I muttered, as I made my zigzagging way to the med bay door.
“It was not you I was doubting, Captain.”
I met her big blinking eyes.
“Noted,” I said softly and checked the status on the door.
It slid open, and I tentatively sucked in a breath of air. It was breathable but metallic. Definitely supplied by the Base, then.
That was good, I told myself.
But not connecting to the ship when commanded to?
Bad. Bad. Very bad.
I ducked out of the med bay and headed toward the armoury.
“The docking connection is the other way,” Zyla helpfully pointed out, just as Odo came stumbling out of the med bay behind us, hitting the far gel wall and bouncing off it.
“I’m coming!” Marvin shouted from still inside the med bay. He didn’t appear, so I thought perhaps his comment was wishful thinking and not reality.
“We go fully armed,” I told Zy.
“I’m not sure arming either Odo or Marvin would be wise, Captain.”
“Hey!” Odo shouted. “Harsh!”
“I’m not arming Marvin,” I said. “But we will be armed.”
“Now there’s the Cap’n I know and love,” Odo announced, bounding after us and succeeding only to hit the gel wall once.
We made our way to the armoury, and I picked out a plasma pistol and thigh holster. I attached them to the flight suit I was wearing. I wasn’t going to kit up in armour; I didn’t think we had the time.
A couple of charge packs for the pistol later, I was storming out of the armoury and heading for the docking arm.
“What are you expecting on the other side of the hatch?” Zy asked as we approached the docking corridor carefully.
“I’m not sure. But it’s not acknowledging my request to gain access through the dock.”
“That’s unusual; I take it?”
“Yes.”
“What is this place, Cap?” Odo asked, fingering his mini-railgun.
“You’ll see,” I said.
“A little bit more intel before we storm it might be helpful,” he muttered.
Absolute Zero (The Sector Wars, Book 1) Page 16