by Ryk Brown
Or so she thought.
“Abby?” a familiar voice called from her office doorway.
A chill ran down Abby’s spine as she recognized the voice. She hesitated for a moment, then looked up from her desk. Standing in the doorway, wearing clothing befitting the average Terran immigrant, was Captain Nathan Scott. “Oh, my God,” she gasped softly.
“May I?” Nathan asked.
Abby stumbled for words for a brief moment. “Of course.”
Nathan stepped into her office, closing the door gently behind him, as if trying not to attract attention. “You look great,” he said, flashing his usual charming smile that automatically engendered trust in him by anyone who was greeted with it. “Your new life must be agreeing with you.”
“Uh… It has… I mean, it does,” Abby replied, fumbling for words. “I’m surprised to see you, Captain…”
“I’m not a captain today,” he replied, pulling at the lapel of his overcoat. “Just Nathan. I’m traveling incognito.”
Abby chuckled at the thought as she rose to greet him. “How did you get in here?” she wondered as she came out from behind her desk and gave him a hug. “Usually, the receptionist warns me if someone is coming back to see me.”
“I told her I was your cousin and that I just arrived from Earth and wanted to surprise you. I guess security is not that tight around here.”
“Not really, no,” she confirmed as she returned to her seat behind her desk. “Please,” she said, pointing to the chair on his side of the desk. She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts, which were racing at the moment. “Forgive me, Nathan, it’s not that I’m not happy to see you. Honestly, I am quite happy to see you, but I’m also afraid to ask what brought you here.”
“A jump shuttle, actually. Josh and Loki flew me over. They’re back at the spaceport.”
Abby smiled. “You know what I mean.”
“Hey, can’t a guy visit an old friend?”
“In the middle of a war?”
“Yeah, Cameron said you wouldn’t buy that,” Nathan replied. “She says ‘hello’, by the way.”
“How is she?”
“Good,” Nathan answered. “The Celestia is in dry dock now. She got beaten up pretty badly. She’ll probably be in there for a few months, at least.”
“And Jessica?”
“She’s on a mission,” Nathan told her. “I can’t say where. Classified, and all that. Left a couple of days ago.”
“I see. Well, it is good to know that everyone is alright,” Abby said.
“You didn’t ask about Vlad,” Nathan wondered.
Abby laughed. “No, I didn’t.”
Nathan also laughed. “He’s also fine, busy fixing up the ship, as usual.”
“So, why did you come, Nathan?” Abby asked.
“Well, since you didn’t buy the ‘came to visit a friend’ bit, I’ll get straight to the point. We’ve struck up an agreement with the Tannans to build a production facility on their world.”
“What kind of production facility?” Abby asked, suspicion in her tone.
“Fast-attack ships,” he explained, “based on the old Scout-class designs.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Abby asked. “I have no expertise in such matters.”
“They are going to be jump-capable, Abby.”
“You don’t need me for that,” she insisted. “Surely by now the Corinairans are as good with jump tech as we are. The Takarans are probably even better.”
“Perhaps,” Nathan agreed. “Montgomery was certainly an innovative thinker, but we don’t necessarily want that type of thinking. Montgomery was a greater risk taker, much like the second STS team that built the Celestia’s drive. You and your father were more meticulous, more careful.”
“You would think that in times like these you would want your research and development people to take risks,” Abby said.
“Yes and no. In this case, we need those jump drives to be capable and reliable. We don’t want to push the envelope. Reliability, precision, ease of operation, and ease of maintenance. That’s what Admiral Dumar wants from the fast-attack ships.”
“Why base them on the Scout ship design?” Abby wondered. “Isn’t that a thirty year-old design?”
“Yes, but that’s what makes them so attractive. The infrastructure required to build them is far less advanced than that required to build something like the Aurora.”
“But aren’t they small, and less powerful?”
“Yes, but they are also far easier to build, and take far less time. In the time it would take to build a single Explorer-class ship, we could build more than a hundred fast-attack ships. Besides, we’ve already outfitted the last three surviving Scout-class ships with jump drives and plasma cannons. They’ve been taking frigates one on one, and winning. A pack of half a dozen could probably take down a cruiser. Not to mention the fact that with the short-range, rapid-jump systems, they can travel farther and faster than an Explorer-class ship. Hell, that’s why I took a shuttle here. It would have taken the Aurora over thirty hours to get here.”
Abby shook her head. “I still don’t see why you need me involved in this project, Nathan.”
“Nobody knows the jump drive better than you do, Abby,” Nathan insisted. “Oh, the Takaran scientists may have more complete theories on what actually happens when you jump, but they don’t understand the technology itself. Not like you do.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Abby disagreed. She looked at Nathan. “There’s something else, something you’re not telling me.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair. “I had a feeling you were going to call me on this one as well.” He frowned. “You’re worse than my sister.”
Abby just continued looking at him, waiting.
“It’s a matter of trust,” Nathan began, “or rather, who to trust. You see, we have reason to believe that we have at least one, or more, spies in our ranks.”
“How do you know?”
“We don’t, not really,” Nathan admitted. “During the last attack on Sol, when the Karuzara rammed the Jung battle platform, their boarding parties went straight for the Falcon bays. Not the regular ones, the ones that were jump-capable. They almost got away with one. If it hadn’t been for Josh and Loki chasing them down, micro-jumping across the system, they would have.” Nathan shifted in his chair, looking Abby in the eyes more intently. “Long ago, you told me that unless the jump emitter array was powered up and nearly ready to discharge, the presence of a jump drive wouldn’t be detectable.”
“That’s correct.”
“Then someone had to have sent a message to the battle platform, in the middle of battle, perhaps only minutes before impact, about those jump-capable Falcons and where they could be found.”
“So you’re here because…”
“We can’t trust anyone else,” Nathan explained. “We’ve only got a handful of scientists with us who know enough about the jump drive to be able to sell us out to the Jung, and we’ve had to take steps to isolate them. We’ve even stopped fabricating mini-jump drives, and have sent the technicians involved in their production back to the Pentaurus cluster for now. We simply can’t take any chances.”
“Couldn’t they sell their knowledge to the Jung from the Pentaurus cluster?” Abby wondered.
“Yes, but nowhere near as easily. We want to isolate the production of jump drives to this world.”
“How is that any better?” Abby asked. “There are millions of people on this planet as well. The Jung were here for something like ten or twenty years, I think. Surely they have spies here as well?”
“Possibly, yes,” Nathan agreed. “But we weren’t planning on building them on Tanna. We were going to build them on the asteroid base. There’s plenty of room in the old Jung fighter base.”
“But there is no orbital assembly platform here,” Abby reminded him, “and I doubt there’s enough room on the little asteroid to build them there.”
&nb
sp; “We don’t need an OAP,” Nathan explained. “We build fast-attack ships here, on the surface.”
“And, how do you plan on getting them to orbit?”
“That won’t be a problem, thanks to you and your father,” Nathan said, grinning. “We build them on dollies, sitting on tracks. Once they’re done, we roll them out the door and down a hill, letting them pick up just enough speed to get far enough up the incline at the other end, and then jump them to high orbit. Once in orbit, they light their mains and accelerate to maintain orbit.”
Abby’s mouth was agape. “That’s brilliant!” she exclaimed. “Simple, yet brilliant.”
Nathan chuckled again. “Then you’re not going to like it when I tell you whose idea it was.”
“Not Vlad’s.” Abby moaned. “Oh, please tell me it wasn’t Vlad’s idea.”
“Sorry.”
Abby sighed. “I don’t know, Nathan. That’s a hell of a commute each day.”
Nathan noticed the wry smile on Abby’s face. “You won’t have to be on site the entire time,” he assured her. “You can work from home as much as is feasible, and we can even arrange for you to keep your current cover in place. No one here will know what you’re really doing, and no one at either plant will know where you are really living.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“We’ll provide you with a Tannan shuttle, equipped with a jump drive. They’ll be on standby to take you wherever you wish, at a moment’s notice.”
“It will have to be a crew that we both can trust,” Abby reminded him, “especially if you think we have a spy in our midst.”
“I think I know two pilots we can trust,” Nathan replied with a grin.
Abby returned the smile, knowing of whom Nathan spoke.
“You used the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’,” Nathan observed. “Does that mean you’re on board?”
“No, it does not,” Abby corrected him, sternly. “I mean, I’m not saying no… yet. I have to talk with my husband first. After all that he has been through recently, I believe I owe him the right to make this decision for us.”
Nathan put his charming smile back on, adding his big round blue eyes to the mix as well, in an obvious attempt to persuade her to agree to accept the position. “But you want to take the job, don’t you.”
“Don’t give me those big blue eyes, Nathan Scott,” Abby scolded. “I’m not falling for them. Not this time.”
* * *
“I found a few things that we can use,” Naralena said as she entered the living room carrying a handful of clothing. “They probably aren’t going to fit either of us correctly, but they…” She paused, looking over Jessica’s shoulder at the computer terminal’s screen. “What are you doing?”
“I’m posting contact messages on network forums,” Jessica replied as she continued to type.
“You really think that is going to work?”
“It’s part of the contact protocol. I post precisely worded messages in various net forums, with user IDs that spell out a code word when a special algorithm is applied.”
“But you can’t just post ‘Hey, spies from Earth have arrived, give us a call,’ right? So how do you communicate with them?”
“The original EDF operatives were issued decryption algorithms that they had to memorize. When they see a user ID that has certain character combinations, they apply the algorithms to see if any of them decrypt the user ID to spell out the contact code word.”
“Which is?”
“Erda.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. It’s an old English word from, I don’t know, a few thousand years ago.”
“It means ‘Earth’ in Angla,” Naralena said.
Jessica paused, turning to look at her. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“What are the odds?” Jessica said, turning back to the computer screen. “Anyway, they then take whichever algorithm converted the user ID into ‘Erda’, increase its factors by the local date on the message, and then use it to decrypt the message. And let me tell you, it is not easy to compose a message that looks normal to everyone else on the forum, but still spells out your intended message when decrypted.”
“What message are you trying to give them,” Naralena asked, “assuming any of them are still alive?”
“‘Erda command request contact within 7 same method,’” Jessica replied, “and I’m betting there are at least three of them still alive and kicking.”
“How do you know?” Naralena wondered.
“Because the forums they host are still active,” Jessica explained. “If they were dead, the forums would get shut down due to lack of payment for the hosting services.”
“Unless someone else took them over, or started one years later with the same name.”
Jessica paused again, looking at Naralena once more. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Her face crinkled as she realized that Naralena was wearing a different shirt.
“Like it?” Naralena wondered. “I found several of them in the closet. It’s a little big on me, which means it will definitely be big on you, but I think if we pin them back a bit, maybe cover them with a loose fitting sweater or something, they’ll work.”
Jessica returned her attention to the computer. “I never made you for a fashion plate.”
“How could you?” Naralena said. “All we ever wear on board are uniforms,” she said as she reexamined the other blouses and sweaters she had brought out. “You know, this is the first time I have been off that ship in months.”
Jessica finished typing the last message, pressing the submit button. “There. That’s the last one.”
“So, what do we do now? Sit here and wait for a response?” Naralena wondered.
“I wish it were that easy.” Jessica stood up from the chair and picked up one of the blouses, holding it up against her body. “What do you think?”
“Wrong color,” Naralena said. “How long do you think it will take to get a response, assuming that you’re correct and one of your operatives is still alive?”
“Could take days, or even weeks. Unfortunately, we only have four weeks to complete our mission. So, in the meantime, we’re going to need to look around on our own, which means we need to get to the capital, Cetia. Unfortunately, we’re on the wrong side of the lake.”
“Surely they have some sort of transit system here.”
“Sure, they have a train that can get us there in a few hours; I checked. But that requires money. More specifically, it requires Jung credits.”
“Like these?” Naralena wondered, a smile on her face. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a Jung hundred-credit chip, waving it in the air in front of her face.
“Nice,” Jessica said. “Where did you find it?”
“It was in a card on the dresser. I think it was a gift or something. I feel kind of bad about taking it, actually.”
“Well, I don’t,” Jessica said, snatching the credit chip from Naralena’s hand. “This chip will get us both to Cetia. It might even get us a hotel room for a few days, while we wait for someone to respond to our requests.” She put the credit chip in her pocket. “What else did you find?”
“Some bags, a few snacks in the kitchen, and the clothing. That’s pretty much it. Oh, and this thing,” Naralena added, pulling a small, flat device from her front pocket. “I think it’s their version of a data pad,” she said, handing the device to Jessica.
Jessica briefly examined the device. “I think you’re right. Let’s hope it’ll connect to the planet’s global network. That will make things a lot easier.”
“So, when do we leave?” Naralena wondered.
“Not until tomorrow morning,” Jessica explained. “There’re only two trains per day, both in the morning, and the last one left a few minutes ago. Besides, we should probably clean up first. We both look, and smell, like we just crawled out of a lake, remember?”
“Trust me, I remember,” Naralena ans
wered. “Are you sure it’s safe to stay here that long?”
“Honestly, no. But we don’t have much choice. We’ll get cleaned up and ready to go, then get a good night’s sleep. We can take shifts keeping a lookout, in case whoever owns this place does show up.”
* * *
Cameron stepped up to the podium in the Karuzara’s main conference room. Sitting in front of her were the first one hundred volunteers from Earth who had passed the security screening process. They came from all the worlds of the Alliance, except for the newest member, Copora. As these people would become crew members on the Celestia and the Aurora, they had been carefully selected. Not only was their screening process far more rigorous, but the required skills and experience were far higher as well. While the majority of the volunteers were from the Pentaurus cluster, at least a quarter of them were from Earth, and had undergone even more intense scrutiny by both Commander Telles’s security teams as well as those of Lieutenant Commander Nash.
“My name is Captain Cameron Taylor. I am the commanding officer of the Celestia, and I will be in charge of your training. As you all know, the Celestia is in dry dock, and is expected to be there for several months. While this leaves us down a ship, it also provides us an excellent facility in which to conduct your training. As the Aurora is the only Explorer-class ship in service at the moment, and she is understaffed, upon completion of your training, you shall all be assigned to her. Some of you have previous military experience, and some of you have time in space in various disciplines. While this can certainly be of benefit, it can also be a hindrance, as you will quickly learn that things aboard a jump-capable warship can be quite different than what you are used to. Those of you without such experience, although not burdened with the need to unlearn old ways, will have to work twice as hard to keep up with your crewmates.”