Space Corps - Explorer (Book 1)

by K. W. Matthews

  The man struggled to speak. When he did, even if Ashley spoke Chinese, she would have barely understood him. The translator did his best.

  “He wants to know what happened.”

  Ashley couldn’t help but smile. “So do we.”

  One of the medics shouted out for the Admiral’s attention. The man she worked with looked bright and alert.

  “Hello, my name is Admiral Sorrells of the US Space Corps.”

  After the translator did his job, the man smiled and extended his hand.

  “I am Commander Liang Hong,” he said in Chinese. He took a quick look around the cargo bay. “It appears I am the commanding officer now. What happened to my men?”

  Ashley looked toward the medic for an answer.

  “Your crew suffered from hypercapnia. It is a condition they got when the air filters on your ship stopped working. In short, they were breathing in what they were breathing out, and it made them very sick. They should all be well again soon.”

  Dismissing the doctor, Ashley expressed her thanks. “Now that you know what happened to your men, we need to know what happened to your ship.”

  Hong’s eyes went wide. “Admiral, I don’t know if you would believe me if I told you. None of us did. That’s why we weren’t able to respond in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “That’s what you wouldn’t believe. I assume your crew scanned for any asteroids?”

  Ashley nodded.

  “If they scanned for them, I’ll bet they didn’t find any, or even the remains of one, did they?”

  Ashley shook her head.

  “They didn’t find any asteroids, because there weren’t any to be found. Our ship was not struck. Our ship was attacked.”

  For a moment, Ashley believed the translator misunderstood Commander Hong’s words. However, the look in Hong’s eyes told her all she needed to know.

  “I’m sorry,” Ashley said, “but are you absolutely certain you meant to say your ship was attacked?”

  Hong nodded.

  Ashley shook her head. “I don’t understand. How could you have been attacked? Who could have done it?”

  “How indeed, but I think you may be better off asking what could have done it.” Hong gave Ashley a moment to digest what he had said. “We thought we were alone in the universe. We were wrong.”

  Chapter 9

  Data Recovery

  “Are you saying you were attacked by some kind of alien?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Hong sighed. “I am more certain of it than anything. If you had been there when it happened, you would understand.”

  Her mind racing, Ashley continued her questioning. “Did they try to contact you in any way before they attacked? Did they give any reason for what they did?”

  Hong shook his head again.

  “They had to have done something!” Ashley shouted.

  Her face grew red with anger and confusion, but Ashley could do nothing to hide it. She had a hard enough time accepting that there could be aliens so close to Earth. It was even harder to accept that they would attack without so much as a warning or explanation.

  “Admiral,” Hong said, “the Chinese are proud. We don’t share our problems with the rest of the world. We would rather fix them ourselves, but there’s something you should know.”

  Ashley looked her guest square in the eyes.

  “Our moon colony, it’s had a lot of problems. We’ve experienced sabotage many times. We never knew who was behind it. Honestly, we thought it might have been the Americans. Now, I’m certain that it was not. Every time our colony was sabotaged, there were certain energy signatures. We had never seen those before, but we saw them again when the Fu Zing came under attack.”

  Grabbing her radio, Ashley called out to the bridge as she rushed out of the cargo bay. “We need to get Commander Gibbs and the Protector back on board as soon as possible. Get us away from the debris field. I need all senior staff to meet me in the conference room. Get additional staff down to cargo bay two so we can get the crew of the Martian lander debriefed.”

  Commander Gibbs caught up with Ashley as she made her way to the conference room.

  “Admiral, what information do you want from the Chinese?”

  “Everything, Commander. I want absolutely everything. If they know it, I want to know it. We need to know exactly what it is we’re dealing with.”

  By the time Ashley entered the conference room, it was almost completely filled with her crew. She took her seat at the head of the table. From a pocket on her hip, she removed an electronic tablet and began to enter a bunch of information. She didn’t stop until security entered, escorting Commander Hong.

  Ashley wasted no time. “All of you are here because we’re facing a threat. We don’t know much about that threat, but we’re going to deal with it.”

  Around the room, most of the staff looked confused. They knew the meeting had something to do with whatever destroyed the Fu Zing, but the admiral acted as if something needed to happen quickly.

  Finally, Eric Holt broke the silence. “Admiral, what kind of threat are we looking at? Isn’t it just an asteroid?”

  Commander Hong spoke too fast for the translator to keep up. When he realized this, he slowed down.

  “I wish we were dealing with an asteroid,” said Hong. “Sadly, we’re dealing with something much more dangerous. We have been attacked by some kind of alien. Unless I’m wrong, this is not the first time, and it will not be the last.”

  Visibly upset, Reynolds said, “That’s not possible. If the Martian lander was attacked, we would see some kind of residue from the explosives used. We scanned the area. There’s no residue on any of the debris.”

  “You are halfway correct, sir,” Hong replied. “You did not see any residue on the debris because we were not attacked using explosives.”

  “Even if they used a rail gun, there would be some evidence of it.”

  Hong looked down at the top of the table. “Would there be residue if they used weapons made of energy?”

  The answer only confused Reynolds more. He spent years in school and many more years serving his country in the Navy. On more than one occasion, he and his teams tested energy weapons, but they were never able to make them viable.

  Ashley said, “Reynolds, I know what you’re thinking, but you have to realize that whatever it was that attacked the lander was probably far more advanced than us. They may have unlocked the technology for energy based weapons. That would certainly explain the lack of residue from explosives and the lack of evidence of an asteroid.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Ensign Tran asked.

  “First, we have to try and make contact.” Ashley shifted uneasily in her seat. “We don’t know why they attacked the Fu Zing. Maybe if we can make contact with them, we’ll be able to figure out why they attacked. It’s possible this all happened because of some kind of misunderstanding.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  She wouldn’t admit it, but Ashley was actually thinking the same thing.

  Gibbs jumped in. “If it’s not, then we have to be prepared to handle the threat. I’ll contact Central Command and see if they have any advice.”

  Ashley nodded. “Very good. In the meantime, we need to figure out a way to track down the aliens. Reynolds, I’m sure you can assist the sensor team in finding a way to do this. Don’t bother asking me for permission to do anything. If you need something to get the job done, then do it.”

  “Admiral,” Hong said, “I don’t know how much it will help, but on our ship’s computers, we had a scan of the alien energy signature. If you can recover any of our computers from the wreckage, you should be able to find the information on them.”

  Reynolds rushed out of the door of the conference room. “I’m on it.”

  “Helm,” Gibbs said, “take it slow. I don’t want any damage to the ship.”

  The pilot nodded.
r />   Looking at the Protector’s monitor, Reynolds could see the remains of the Fu Zing in the distance.

  “You have a plan?” Gibbs asked.

  “We’ll do something similar to before. We’ll extend a tether to their ship and make our way onboard. Is your pilot good enough to hold the Protector steady while we cross over?”

  “He’s a good pilot. I wouldn’t count on him to fly the Explorer, but he can handle his own with the Protector. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  At the helm, the pilot slowly pulled back on a lever and pressed several buttons. The thrusters on the front of the ship fired up and began to slow the vessel.

  “Commander,” the pilot said, “we’ll be in range of the Fu Zing shortly.”

  “How long?”

  “ETA is ten minutes.”

  Reynolds nodded to the crew and crawled down a chute to the lower level of the craft. Near the airlock stood a closet filled with environmental suits. Removing one, he turned off his magnetic boots.

  After taking off his uniform, Reynolds wore nothing but a thin jumpsuit. To cover it, he stepped into the first layer of the environmental suit. Though bulky and difficult to move in, it provided protection against the cold of space. Adding the breathing apparatus wasn’t so easy.

  “Can I get some help, please?” Reynolds asked the Chinese commander and the translator.

  Both men stood to help, but only the translator knew what to do. The large chest piece slid over Reynolds’ head and strapped to his legs while tightening across his chest. After adding the gloves and boots, he taped the ends to the rest of the suit to ensure no air could leak out.

  With the helmet in place, the only thing left to do was turn it on.

  “Your turn, gentlemen,” Reynolds said.

  The translator suited up quickly with the help of the commander, but Hong seemed confused.

  “I’m going over there?” he asked.

  The translator did his job.

  Reynolds replied, “You’re the most important piece of this puzzle. I wouldn’t know how to access your computers if my life depended on it.”

  Soon, the three men stood ready to depart and the Protector moved into place. The cargo hold sealed shut and one end of the airlock opened. The men worked together to take in a long length of rope with a magnetic catch at the end. They tied the other end to one of the bars in the airlock.

  The back end of the airlock closed, and the other opened. All the oxygen shot out into space. The men didn’t need to, but felt the urge to hold onto the bars of the airlock for fear of flying out.

  Reynolds grabbed hold of the end of the tether and aimed carefully. While close, the Fu Zing could become a difficult target if it moved. Once locked on, the chief engineer hit a button that made the tether shoot out into the hole in the wreckage of the Chinese ship. When it hit, the force of the impact caused the electromagnetic seal to activate. The tether was secure.

  Using the rope as a guide, the men dragged themselves into the ship. Once inside, they activated their boots and began to look around. Shrapnel flew about and damaged the inside of the craft even more. Even Commander Hong found it difficult to make his way around.

  “There.”

  Reynolds and the translator jumped. Sure enough, there sat a relatively intact computer. As part of a much larger system, it couldn’t be removed.

  Thinking, Reynolds grabbed a screwdriver from his tool belt and removed the computer’s casing. He knew computers well and knew that the parts weren’t compatible with the computers on the Explorer.

  “We can’t just take the hard drive, and we can’t take the computer. We need to turn it on here and pull the files.”

  Commander Hong looked at Reynolds like a madman. “We can’t do that,” he said through the translator. “There’s nothing here to power it on.”

  “We can use power from the Protector. We’ll just have to run a line.”

  With the line run from the Protector to the remaining portion of the ship, Reynolds smiled as the lights flicked on. Glad to use something else, he turned off the flashlights on his environmental suit.

  Turning the computer on, Reynolds and Commander Hong managed to pull all the data files. They took their time in doing so until they received a message.

  “Commander Reynolds, please come in,” Gibbs said over the radio. “We need you out of there.”

  “We’re almost done,” the chief engineer said.

  “No, we need you out now.”

  The strain in the commander’s voice shook Reynolds. He could barely move. “What’s going on?”

  “When you powered on the ship, you must have triggered something. We’re detecting an overload. Get out of there, now!”

  Hurrying, the three men grabbed their gear and pulled against the tether to the Protector. Halfway across, the connection to the Fu Zing broke off.

  “Sorry, but we have to get out of here,” Gibbs said.

  The portion of the Fu Zing lit up in an explosion. Only small pieces remained.

  Clutching tightly to the tether, the men shielded their eyes while the Protector pulled away from the blast.

  “Is everyone alright?” Reynolds asked.

  The men nodded.

  Looking right at the Chinese Commander, Reynolds said, “I want to know what that was.”

  “I am not sure. The attack must have left a short in the electrical system.”

  Chapter 10

  Picking the Path

  The crew worked hard for hours. When they finally came up with a way to track the alien vessel, the admiral put everyone on high alert. Down all the long corridors of the Explorer, there were thin beads of lights. During times such as this, they lit up in a brilliant red. With a looming threat, no one was allowed time for recreation and no one took time to sleep. The admiral insisted that if a threat to the United States existed, her crew would work around the clock.

  When Reynolds and his team finally found a way to track the energy signature of the vessel, they became excited and determined. Over and over, he checked the readings from the Explorer’s scanners. Part of him didn’t want to believe what they told him. Another part told him that the scans couldn’t be wrong.

  Back on the bridge, Reynolds called the admiral over to the scanning station.

  Ashley looked hard at the readout, but she didn’t want to believe it. “Are you telling me that thing—?”

  “Is headed for Earth? Yes, sir.”

  “Has Central Command been informed?”

  “No, sir, not yet. I wanted to make sure you saw the same thing I did before I contacted them.”

  “Do it. Let command know exactly what we’re seeing here. Ask them to inform the Chinese government. I don’t know if they have any weaponry on the lunar colony, but if they do, I want them to be ready to use it.”

  Ashley hit a few buttons on the console and sent the readout over to Harris and Gonzales. Once she sent it, she rushed over to talk to her pilot and co-pilot.

  “Harris, on that readout, we have the path of the alien vessel. We believe it’s headed for Earth.”

  “That’s odd,” Harris said. “It’s not taking a straight path. They may be trying to avoid detection.”

  Gonzales looked over the readout as well. “If we cut across its projected course, we may be able to catch up to it before it gets there.”

  “Maybe, but we’ll need engineering to keep a sharp eye on our hull integrity. We can cut across its path, but we’ll take a beating by any particles that get in our way. Without taking the time to chart a proper course, we’re running a pretty decent risk.”

  “Yes, but can it be done?” Ashley asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then do it. I’ll have the sensor team keep a sharp eye out for anything that may cause you any problems. How long will it take us to catch up with them?”

  Harris punched some numbers into his console. “If we go the maximum safe speed, we’ll intersect with their current path in about a week. Of
course, we have one major risk.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Without knowing how fast they’re going, we have no way of knowing if we’ll beat them there or not.”

  Gonzales asked, “What if they get there before we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashley said, “but let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

  Ashley made her way back to her seat and grabbed her radio. “Docking bay, this is the admiral. Please come in.”

  “Go ahead, Admiral.”

  “I need you to call together the crew of the Protector. Let them know they’ll need to be suited up and ready to depart within thirty minutes. Please have one of your staff begin pre-flight checks for the Protector.”

  “Yes, sir. Consider it done. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Absolutely. I want the crew of the Guardian ready at a moment’s notice.”

  When Ashley finished talking, Gibbs stepped up to her. “Admiral, is it safe to assume you want me to captain the Protector?”

  “Would I trust anyone else?”

  Commander Gibbs smiled to show his appreciation.

  “Now, Commander, you’ll find your flight path once you board the Protector. It will be similar to ours, but since the Protector is a bit faster than us, you will be going out a little further.”

  “May I ask why, sir?”

  “Because if we miss the alien vessel, I’m hoping that you don’t.”

  Gibbs twisted his face in concern. “Admiral, I don’t want to sound negative, but if the aliens prove to be hostile to us as well, wouldn’t you prefer to have the Protector here with the Explorer? I’d hate to leave you short any firepower.”

  Ashley sat. “I’ve thought of that. I’m hoping it turns out to be a peaceful encounter. After all, we’ve never done anything against them.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, Commander. We have to hope for the best.”

  “Sir, they attacked the Fu Zing without cause.”

  “I’m fully aware of that. However, I’m hoping there was more to the story than what we’ve been told.”