Zak Jahns

by Gregory Anderson

  “What has been speculated was that the use of nuclear weapons punched holes in the ozone layer and they asphyxiated. The rest, still in space probably destroyed each other in retaliation.”

  Zak thought that perhaps Gina knew more than she let on. The governor spoke.

  “Fascinating, it would be interesting to find out more but now Zak, where is Pete.”

  “Ah yes, that, well he was on the ship, now he is not. I had ordered him to stay on the ship but apparently slipped out and now is in the compound so he should not be hard to find. Tell me Governor, just what did he do.”

  “He promised a young innocent that he would take her with him to the stars but instead used her badly and disappeared, her family is out for blood.”

  Gina interjected.

  “Pete and Dihr had a conversation of sorts and I think he went to see the woman.”

  Zak and the governor were wide eyed.

  “And how did Pete look after his talk with Dihr.”

  “Terrified, an odd look on him but I am sure he will do the right thing, whatever that may be.”

  There was silence for several minutes while they all considered what that might mean. They concluded the evening without bring up the subject again. Zak planned on departing in the morning if Pete was on board or not.

  -3-

  Pete was not there in the morning but he was not the first crew member to be a no show. Zak knew he would get a message from Pete at some point or perhaps when they returned some day. Never the less they did delay departure by one hour. Lift off was uneventful and smooth with no atmosphere to push through. Quickly they were on their way to pick up the six containers waiting in orbit. Maybe if Pete had been on board they would have known about the Federated ship just beyond the horizon. Maybe they would have seen the missiles coming at them. Maybe if Hart had been on the bridge they would have seen all this, but he was not, another sat at navigation. By the time they realized it was almost too late.

  “Evasive maneuvers, everybody brace, full power now.”

  Panther's four huge engines slammed them back against their restraints and anyone that had not grabbed something solid could end up injured severely. Zak rolled the ship over as they accelerated away but the missiles were smart and adjusted course to match. There was no way to escaping as two missiles detonated against the ship's shielding. Before the ship could compensate for the lost shields two more missiles made it through and punched a hole in the spine. The bridge lost all power and more importantly, control, they could not maneuver or fire weapons. Panther was essentially two ships connected by the spine. In the aft section engineering Uhr shoved Gina at a station just before they started accelerating and maneuvering. That station popped up with navigation and weapons control while Uhr and Dihr's stations displayed pilot and power.

  “As soon as you get a lock fire at that ship with aft cruise missiles and get ready with point defense.”

  The graphic overlay on her station showed missiles incoming and just behind was the Federated ship. Dihr and Uhr would fight the ship while everyone in the fore section could only hold on hopelessly. Uhr flipped the ship over to arc above the incoming and at the same time move closer to the Federated ship. Gina was terrified as she was slammed sideways in her seat as a firing solution and then lock came up on her board. Without a thought she fired six cruise missiles at the ship and then fired twelve smaller missiles at the incoming.

  “Missiles away, six at the ship and twelve at the incoming, laser point defense on automatic.”

  She had done this as an automatic response rather than with any real thought. Now she considered that the six missiles may only take out the shields so she fired another six. Gina had never been directly involved in a space battle before but she had rode out more than one on Federated ships. The thing about a space battle was the time it took for missiles to reach their targets across the great distances. She just now looked harder at the screen and found the time to target data.

  “Point defense missiles in fifteen minutes, twenty for first volley to reach the ship and another five for the second.”

  “Good, good, keep watching for more and be ready.”

  Both Uhr and Dihr were busy trying to maneuver Panther with only the aft thrusters to change course. With the large fore thrusters Panther was quite agile but now it was hard to effect fast changes as they sped away from the Federated frigate. On the bridge Zak realized that Uhr had control although he had no idea what was going on as they were almost blind, running on auxiliary power up front. All they had was one monitor showing a small portion of space in front of them. Zak wondered if the ship could take the strain it was under with whatever damage the spine had taken. There was nothing they could do but ride it out and hope. Uhr had brought Panther over and around the Federated ship bringing them behind and into firing position as tiny but brilliant flashes indicated on the screens Gina called out.

  “Five missiles down, one made it through with two of ours following.”

  Just a few minutes more and another flash indicated the last enemy missile was down. The Federated ship was slowly coming about to face Panther when the first cruise missiles hit her. The specially modified cruise missiles packed a real wallop as the Federated ship appeared to shudder and stop. This was an optical illusion as they monitored the hits.

  “Full shield collapse on their aft section. Closing to canon range.”

  Uhr just grunted as they adjusted course away from the doomed Federated ship once again. He had thought to come from behind and fire the six remaining missiles but now it looked like it was unnecessary if only one more of their missile hit. It was not a long wait before they knew. One of Panther's missiles reached deep into the enemy ship and breached an anti-mater chamber. After a super brilliant flash that could be seen back on the moon and the bridge there was nothing left of the Federated ship. Uhr brought the ship to station keeping and unstrapped his belt as did Gina and Dihr. Uhr who was never shook under pressure said.

  “I thought this was the end, thanks to you two we have survived.”

  Dihr smiled.

  “You had something to do with it also so just be calm and get us back down to the moon so we can fix the ship.”

  And they did make their way down as Gina asked.

  “Uhr, I am sure those cruise missiles we fired were twice as fast as they should be, was that my imagination.”

  “You noticed that did you, good. You may be smarter than the average human, I like that.”

  Zak was relieved and grateful as Panther touched down at the outpost. Uhr had come through and surprised him immensely with his ability to pilot and defend the ship. He could not have done better himself. When the docking tubes were secured the governor and a emergency crew were waiting for them. Zak had a blank look on his face and just shrugged when asked if any were injured, he just did not know. It turned out that there were a few injuries but none serious and the crew brought those out first and pushed the captain out of the way.

  “So what happened up there.”

  “It was Federated, unprovoked, with no warning. You will have to send some sort of message, Hallbrook is not going to be happy losing a ship.

  “So what have you done to make Federated dislike you so much Zak.”

  “Probably because of my reports of their pirate activities or maybe they are growing too large and spreading too far. Hallbrook craves power and he is smart. If he amasses a big enough fleet he may well start taking over planets.”

  “We had no idea, no one bothers us that much as remote as we are. Now that things are starting to make sense. Federated has harassed us more than once looking for technology, which is what we do. This incident makes us vulnerable.

  “Yes, you are vulnerable and there is no one to keep Federated in check, they may be coming for you.”

  “I think we need to evacuate, can you take us. We are only two hundred sixty and two of the containers are habitat modules so we could fit.”

  “Well governor, we are
not going anywhere until Panther is fixed and you may be right. Hallbrook may just decide to waste you all when he finds out what happened to his ship, he may even blame you. You will have to move fast and so will we to get the ship in shape. There is no telling how close Federated may be.”

  Uhr was not happy, the main conduit running through the spine had a huge chunk missing which is why all forward control was gone. They had no parts on hand to rebuild the entire section so they were forced to reroute everything through the secondary conduit which would leave the entire ship with no redundancy or backup system control. As it was the secondary had damages from a previous attack so just basic controls could be restored. They figured that they had less than twenty four hours for repairs to be completed. They got it done in twenty, no one slept.

  The scientists were not happy about leaving the isolated moon. It was a perfect environment to conduct their studies and carry out experiments. They had picked the moon because it had all the mineral elements they needed to work with and the isolation meant few interruptions or people nosing around. Panther went up and grabbed the two habitat containers. These containers had all that was needed to support life including heat, air generators and lights. Unlike unlike cold containers they also had shielding, power and airlock configurations so Panther could interface with them. The ship still had the power to run the containers and although crude their was room for the scientists, their families and equipment. It was a quiet group leaving the place that had been their home for nearly a dozen years. These families who's children grew up on the isolated moon would be in for a culture shock when moving to a congested planet with open air and sky. On the other hand maybe living in a breathable atmosphere would be a good thing. Ironically, Pete was back on board but the crew met him with stony silence for the most part, he was no longer crew. He was now part of a family and had a very young woman to provide for without many prospects for work. With everyone aboard and the two habitat containers secured Panther lifted off the moon. Before they made it far there were brilliant flashes that came from the surface. The outpost would not be left for Federated or someone else to claim.

  “Hart, set course for the grax worlds, planet four.”

  “Setting course captain, you realize that the governor is not going to be happy about this.”

  “I am not so much about that as I am of trying to keep a schedule, we have a commitments.”

  As it was Zak ran a loose schedule and they seldom got anywhere on time. The known galaxy was a large place and it could take a year to go from one end to another. Zak knew the governor would not be happy but his instincts told him to leave the Colisus system straight away. If they followed the Perseus arm towards the center they could drop off the group in a few days but that is not the direction they were heading. Instead they would be jumping directly from the Perseus arm through the void to the Cygnus arm. This shortened the trip to the grax worlds by nearly three months and avoided the dark worlds. The dark worlds were not literally dark but their peoples lived in a nearly lawless state so most avoided them.

  The galaxy's sixty two known worlds had been mostly peaceful for almost two centuries but that was in part because of different worlds keeping to themselves. People were rational enough to limit contact as a way to limit conflict. Just because the slave trade and other vices still existed did not make it possible or even advisable to intervene. There were plenty of empty, habitable planets for those who disagreed with the live and let live attitude that prevailed galaxy wide. The colony on Edahni was one such group who wanted to remain and isolated from the rest of the known worlds, in as much as that was possible. Now this moon outpost would have to find another place to do their work.

  “No captain, this is not acceptable. I demand you take us to Colisus Three.”

  Zak was not amused by the governor, he had no obligation and could have left them there on that moon for Federated.

  “How about we drop you back where you came from. No governor, this is good as it gets for you.”

  “But this could take months.”

  Zak shook his head, he knew the trip would only take weeks not months but he not would tell the governor that. Better to let him stew, the scientists, by nature could find things to do and occupy themselves, the containers had enough room.

  “I am sure you can find ways to occupy yourselves, now get off my bridge and never, ever presume to tell a captain what he can or cannot do on his own ship.”

  And that would be the last they saw of the governor until they reached the next destination. A few of the scientists did venture around the ship but they were respectful and even helpful in some ways. A couple of the group were excellent chefs so the food was decidedly better while they were aboard. The trip was mostly uneventful and for the crew quite routine. Space travel was a boring affair unless you were prepared for it as seasoned crews knew well.

  Days and days would go by in the dark of space and all the stars looked the same after awhile. Panther's crew had their own amusements and hobbies. Many were couples which made it easier to endure the long periods and gave the something to gossip about. As diverse as Panther's crew was rarely did there get to be any real heated arguments and when they did crop up Zak would just point out.

  “If you can not get along you can get out now, out the nearest airlock.”

  This never failed to stop the occasional outburst from the crew. The same held true for the group who had been living on a moon under domes, they just knew better than to complain too much. The only real complaint came from the scientists after completing the jump across the void. For many a journey through jump space caused varied health issues. Nothing permanent happened but more than a few experienced dizziness, disorientation or extreme headaches. Because they had not been warned about this beforehand it had to be explained away as no one would believe that a century old container ship was jump capable.

  The forth planet of the grax system was where where Uhr and Dihr had family as well as being a major manufacturing hub. Grax were the best engineers and innovators in the known worlds. They had built the shuttle that Panther carried in the aft bay. Although humans tended to shy away from them they never shied away from the groundbreaking navigational systems that they had developed. Space navigation ran on grax built systems almost exclusively and without it a ship could not jump at all. Gina had kept busy under the tutelage of Dihr and Uhr learning learning the complexities of the old ship which was much more than it appeared to be. The shield emitters were in three separate layers on a hull that was five times thicker than anything currently built. These innovations happened when the Cyrillium military used it as a test bed. Many of those innovations never made it into Cyrillium military ships because the costs were deemed prohibitive. Panther was small compared to Cyrillium destroyers and empire ships. Much of grax technology had gone to the Cyrillium military and the peoples held a close bond, not that they associated with each other outside of business. The grax had no military nor a need as the Cyrillium ships regularly patrolled their worlds. When Panther finally made the fourth planet there were two Cyrillium ships docked at the space station. Zak would be taking meetings with the Cyrillium as well as grax officials. One of the ships docked was an explorer ship and if it was Jings he was looking forward to the meeting. Zak had known Jings all his life and had grown up on his reports of unknown worlds and phenomenon. It was Jings that had first made diplomatic relations with the Moog after navigating through the dead worlds. But Zak knew that the single most important thing was Federated. Federated had managed to take control of the Colisus worlds in a few short years and it was feared Hallbrook would not stop there. This was a major concern of all the other worlds but especially to the Cyrillium fleet who policed all the other worlds.

  “Yes, we were attacked without provocation and feared the outpost would be targeted in retaliation so we evacuated the group upon their request. They are on planet now.”

  This was the opening of the meeting between Jings, captain Bos and t
hree grax officials. Stal, one of those officials asked Zak the next question.

  “Do you think they may recruit from the dark worlds to expand their fleet and influence.”

  This was a timely and valid question and Zak knew Hallbrook better than any in the room.

  “No, Hallbrook may not have any ethics but he does understand how to control people and those of the dark worlds can not be controlled. I think he will continue to consolidate and strengthen what he has before expanding further. The man is smart and unpredictable.”

  “How many ships does Federated have right now and are they any match to us.”

  “All due respect Bos, most of the Federated corvettes are better armored than your frigate and their crews are merciless. If not for Uhr's quick thinking we would not be talking today.”

  Ptal, another grax official asked another relevant question.

  “Just how soon could Federated become a threat to the Grax worlds.”

  “Very few of the Federated ships are jump capable at this time and this is another reason I think he will wait and consolidate his power and expand his fleet capabilities. That said, if Federated comes it will not be a small thing. It will be a highly skilled battle group that ship for ship will outgun Cyrillium ships three to one. I would put the threat level as high but it will be some time.”

  “Three to one, bah, that just can not be. Cyrillium ships are superior to any out there and our crews are the best trained. No rouge group of thugs can match us even one on one.”