As they hurried toward the belt, Ethan, who was also dual-hatting as the electronic warfare officer or EWO, extended their electronic sensor antennas up. Even in passive mode, their advanced suite of tools could detect virtually any electronic emissions in the system—especially since they now knew what frequencies and bandwidths were used by the Zodarks and Sumerians.
The losses from the previous battle at the Rhea gate and New Eden had cost Space Command a lot of officers and enlisted personnel. Ships could be replaced, but experienced and trained people took a bit longer to replace. That was why Ethan had to fill in as the EWO in addition to being helmsman.
The next eight hours went by both quickly and painfully slow. Traveling to the asteroid belt seemed to take forever, even at full speed. However, in terms of collecting electronic data, as soon as their suite of tools came online, they were inundated with information. The second planet from the sun appeared to be the hub of electronic activity, but data also came in from the third planet and at least three moons.
More ominously, there appeared to be a lot of emissions matching Zodark signatures. So far, they’d only spotted three Zodark ships, none of which seemed to be very large; they were probably smaller warships or transports. The question now was, how long would the Earthers hang out in the asteroid belt before they withdrew to Rhea?
Turning in his pilot’s chair, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ethan inquired, “Sir, do our orders allow us to make contact with the Sumerians?”
Reynolds had been wondering that himself. His orders were to scout the system, get a lay of the place for the main fleet. They didn’t say he couldn’t make contact, but they didn’t say he could either. It was a gray area. If they hadn’t spotted a couple of Zodark ships and Zodark facilities on some of the nearby planets and moons, he’d probably make contact without a second thought, but now he wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t think the timing’s right,” Reynolds said. “It looks like there’s a fairly large Zodark presence in the system. We can’t take that on, and frankly, I’m not sure what kind of response we’d get from the Sumerians. For all we know, they might side with the Zodarks. After all, they’ve been part of their empire for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.”
Ethan bit his lower lip, thinking it over. He seemed to agree with Reynolds’s assessment.
“What do you want us to do now?” Ethan asked. They’d already been in the system for ten hours.
Reynolds shrugged. “I suppose we stay put for a few days, collect data, see if anything interesting happens and try to decipher what we can with our equipment. Unless we see something interesting, I’ll probably have us bug out in four or five days.
“We’re at least two months out from Rhea. The fleet isn’t going to make a move on this system until we return with our data or our com drone does. Make sure the drone is updated hourly. If we somehow get zapped, we need to make sure the com drone can make it back to our people. They’ll need our intelligence.”
*******
Two days later, Ethan Hunt was sitting in the ship’s mess, sipping a cup of coffee. Lieutenant Commander Joe Reynolds finished grabbing a fresh cup of black gold himself and sat down across from him.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Reynolds asked. He ripped open a creamer packet and dumped it in his coffee.
Ethan placed his coffee cup down and looked at his friend. “Is it wrong to be afraid of going back into battle again?” he asked pointedly.
Reynolds took a sip of his coffee and winced slightly at how hot it was. “No, it’s not wrong to be scared, Ethan.” He stared off into space for a moment before adding, “Frankly, I’d be more concerned if you weren’t afraid. Heck, I’m just as nervous as you. I mean, this is my first command. I’m new to all of this. Before being assigned the weapons officer on our last ship, I was on patrol duty in the Belt. We were supposed to be hunting pirates. Ironically, for all the pirate activity they talked about on the news or even in our intelligence briefings, we never spotted a single pirate ship.”
“I’ll bet you wish you could go back to the days of pirate hunting,” Ethan said whimsically.
Reynolds shrugged. “Yes and no. It was a simpler time before the Zodarks, no doubt about that. But I think if we hadn’t discovered them, we humans would probably have found a reason to fight each other. I think a lot of people forget that toward the end of the SET, tensions were getting pretty high between the Asian Alliance, the GEU, and the Republic. In a way, it looks like the Zodarks helped humanity find peace and come together as a species.”
A smile spread across Ethan’s face. “That’s what my dad said last Christmas. Still, I’m concerned we’re in over our heads. We don’t have a clue how big the Zodark empire is or how many other races of aliens are out there.”
He downed the rest of his coffee. “Joe, weren’t you scared when Commander Dobbs launched our first attack at the gate?” he pressed.
Reynolds took a deep breath before he replied. “Ethan, I was terrified. It was my job to fire the weapons, get a lock on their ships and get our weapons off, and hopefully hit them. I also had to jam their sensors at the same time.”
“How’d you overcome that fear, Joe? I almost feel paralyzed by it,” Ethan stammered as he looked nervously around the room to make sure no one else could hear him.
Shrugging, Joe replied, “I guess I just fell back on our training. I knew if I didn’t get those torpedoes fired and jam their sensors, we were most likely going to die. I took a deep breath to focus, then I just did my job to the best of my abilities and hoped everyone else did the same thing. That’s why we run so many drills and train as hard as we do. So when we’re in a situation like that, we fall back on our training like second nature.”
Reynolds tilted his head. “What’s going on, Ethan? I haven’t seen you this unsure of yourself before. Something going on I should know about?”
Ethan struggled to answer right away. He suddenly felt a wave of emotions hitting him. He grabbed for his coffee cup and saw it was empty. He stalled a moment to let his body get his emotions back under control. “I…I’m not sure. In the last few weeks, as we’ve traveled here, I keep having dreams and memories of that day: the alarm bells going off, the ship taking hits, smoke, people yelling, and then finally, the order to abandon ship. I mean, my life pod barely made it out of the Viper before it blew up. I pissed myself when the ship blew up just below my pod. I hardly made it out of there, Joe. I mean, a second or two longer…and I’d be dead.”
Ethan paused for a second as he wiped a tear away. “We lost nearly half our crew, Joe. A friend of mine from the medbay, Susie, she died. She wasn’t able to make it to the life pods fast enough…how do you deal with that kind of loss and still keep going, Joe?”
Reynolds took a breath in and looked off to the corner of the room. “Ethan, we keep going because we have to. We honor our friends we’ve lost by avenging their deaths and by living good, honest lives. We help others when we can, and we try to be the best possible officers and people we can.
“They died—we can’t change that, but they died for something they believed in. They died defending their friends, their families, and, most importantly, our way of life and our freedoms. We can’t forget that. They died so that we may live. That’s how you keep going, Ethan. We don’t forget about them, and we don’t pretend it didn’t happen; we remember them, we live in their honor, and we do our jobs.”
Ethan thought about that, then nodded. “You’re right, Joe. Thanks for framing it that way. That really helped. And it helps knowing I’m not alone in feeling this way.”
“Just keep your chin up, Ethan,” Reynolds said. “Know you’re not alone in this struggle or with these thoughts. We all experience them, OK? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back up to the bridge. My shift starts in a few minutes.”
Reynolds left Ethan to finish his break. He wasn’t due to come on shift for another couple of hours. Since they were still playing cloak-and-dagger, hiding in the belt,
Reynolds was letting his folks rest up and enjoy some downtime. The bulk of the work being done on the ship right now was electronic intelligence, and it didn’t take a lot of people to man that equipment. The AI did most of the work.
What was consuming a lot of time was writing up the hundreds of contact reports and summaries of what they were collecting. Some might have thought of it as busywork, but it was interesting, and it needed to get done. With a working understanding of both the Sumerian language and the Zodarks’, the AI deciphered everything being transmitted, even the encrypted message traffic.
So far, they’d been able to determine that the Sumerians had a station in orbit over their planet, connected to the surface by a space elevator. They also appeared to have a colony on another planet and two of the moons in the system. Interplanetary commerce was taking place between them all, with some mining operations in another part of the asteroid belt. This was actually good news as far as Commander Reynolds was concerned.
One of their priority intelligence requirements was to ascertain the level of sophistication of the Sumerian space program. While they’d only been in the system for two days, it was clear the Sumerians could travel between planets and their colonies. The Zodarks might not have allowed them to have a space navy, but they certainly could build one. This was a crucially important piece of intelligence. If Space Command was going to launch further operations into Zodark-controlled space, they needed to establish forward operating bases. They also needed an ally that could actively participate in the war, one that could build warships.
*******
Three days later, when Reynolds and Ethan were on duty together, Reynolds was starting to get a bit bored when Ethan suddenly announced, “Captain, I’m finally getting some sensor data from deeper in the system. It appears there is not one but three stargates in this system.”
Reynold’s left eyebrow rose in surprise. “Really? Why are we only just now learning about this?”
Ethan looked more closely at the data. “Um, this system is a bit larger than we initially thought, Captain. Those stargates are pretty far out. If we engaged the FTL drive, it’d take two days to reach the first one. The other gates are roughly the same distance, just in different directions.”
“Let me look at something,” Reynolds said as he pulled up a holographic representation of the systems they’d traveled to that connected directly back to Rhea.
If they backtracked out of the system they were in right now, the next order was H8-ZTO, which had a total of three stargates in it. One gate led back to 0ZN7-G, which led to Rhea. The other gate, HHJD-5, led deeper into the Zodark empire—at least according to the captured Zodark star map.
“If HHJD-5 leads deeper into Zodark space, and YV-FDG leads to the Sumerian home system, where do these other stargates lead?” Reynolds said, thinking aloud. “I mean, according to the star map, it leads to a dead end. Then again, there are twelve systems down this chain…”
Reynolds looked at Ethan—it was only the two of them on the bridge. The other three crew members were off. “Lieutenant, how much do you know about the Sumerians or the Zodarks and their relationship with the Sumerians?” Reynolds asked.
Ethan’s face scrunched up. “I’ve had some time on my hands these last two cruises, so I’ve spent a fair bit of it reading up on what we know thus far. From my understanding, there are two current theories. One says the Sumerians are essentially cattle, a food source for the Zodarks—not their whole diet, but definitely part of it. The other theory says the ten percent taken as tribute are slaves and may even be used in their army.
“That second theory coincides with some other sources I’ve heard about,” Ethan continued. “There was a researcher from Istanbul who has speculated based on a single report from one of the Sumerians that the Zodarks might be using this culling as a means of integrating humans into their own army, creating a janissary force as the ancient Ottoman Empire had. Supposedly they place these culled humans on other planets to grow their numbers and integrate them into their military war machine.”
Reynolds thought for a moment. The theory mostly jibed with what he had heard as well. But something else was nagging at him. “Yeah, I’ve heard about that alternative theory. It might be true, but I’m not sure. Hunt, if I’m not mistaken, I think there was one Sumerian who also said he had been a slave to a Zodark NOS—his pet, so to speak. Right?”
Ethan nodded. “Yes, that’s correct. He’s the Sumerian who told us about this other theory of the cullings. That Sumerian is now in charge of a newly formed up Sumerian RA battalion. They plan on using him to help become the nucleus of a new Sumerian military leadership once we liberate their home world.”
“Yes, exactly. I know no one else was able to corroborate some of the other information he provided. If I’m not mistaken, he mentioned humans populating other planets. He said he hadn’t personally been to them, but he heard his master speak of them at one time. Do you remember reading that report?” Reynolds asked.
Ethan suddenly realized where this line of questioning was going. “You think these other stargates might lead to those systems? Those planets with other humans on them?”
Reynolds smiled. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Get us out of this asteroid belt and set for FTL. We’ll set a course for the nearest gate. I’ll get the rest of the crew ready while you get the ship in position.”
Twenty minutes later, the crew and the ship were ready to jump. It was unknown if the Zodarks or the Sumerians could detect them activating their FTL drive, but Reynolds deemed it worth the risk. If they could explore the rest of the chain and discover other human worlds, that would be incredible. It could help them unravel the origins of human history, and answer questions like why there were humans on other planets, and why the Zodarks ruled these other planets, but not Earth.
The Franklin spent the next two days in warp, traveling to the first gate. If the star map was correct, this stargate would lead to the system UAAU-C, which was connected to two other star systems. It also bypassed the star system LUL-WX, in case they needed an alternate route to escape out of the chain.
They had no idea what was in any of the star systems down this chain. Still, if their hypothesis was correct, this could be an enormous discovery, and well worth the detour from their original mission. They were, after all, a deep space reconnaissance ship.
“Captain, we’re approaching the stargate. Do you want me to activate the gate as soon as we emerge warp?” Hunt asked.
Reynolds was nervous but excited as well. “Yes, just as soon as we come out of FTL.”
A couple of minutes later, the warp bubble around their ship collapsed, and the massive circular structure known as the stargate came into view.
Lieutenant Hunt switched them over from FTL travel to their MPD thrusters and applied power to the main engines. The ship accelerated quickly. It didn’t take them long to approach the stargate threshold before the gate activated. In the blink of an eye, a shimmering wave appeared in the circle, beckoning them to enter it. In a way, it looked like a puddle of light gray liquid in a cup. When they entered it, they were transported across hundreds of light-years.
Reynolds thought traveling through the stargate was far and away the coolest thing he’d ever experienced. The tunnel they went through wasn’t a straight, linear path. It snaked down, up, to the right and left, almost like they were flying in a fighter plane in the atmosphere or riding a super scary roller coaster. It didn’t take long to travel through the gates, sometimes just a few minutes. The longest jump they’d experienced thus far was close to five minutes. Most of the jumps lasted around two to three minutes.
When they popped out the other end and into the star system UAAU-C, they were greeted by the blackness of space, a canvas of stars, and three suns.
“OK, Hunt. Get our engines up to full speed and start looking for a place to hide. Initiate passive sensors as well. Let’s get a lay of the land,” Reynolds ordered as his crew went to work.
They moved away from the stargate, heading in the direction of the three suns, in search of any planet that could potentially house humans. An hour into their journey, their passive sensors started picking up results, showing two planets in the system. One appeared to be habitable, so they headed in that direction.
Turning to Reynolds, Lieutenant Hunt announced, “I’m not showing any signs of Zodark ships in the system. Can I go active with our sensors?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s get a better lay of this star system,” Reynolds replied.
Ethan’s fingers danced across the keyboards as he activated their sensors. In seconds, the ship emitted high-energy waves across all spectrums and wavelengths, blanketing the entire solar system. This would last for a few hours while they waited for feedback to their ship with a good view of objects and activities in the system.
Half a day went by with the Franklin heading toward the one planet they believed could support human life. Eventually, the planet appeared on their sensors. It was fascinating looking—bright yellowish-orange. Their immediate sensor returns indicated it was an arid planet, but it did have an atmosphere that looked like it could support humans.
Lieutenant Commander Reynolds sat forward in his chair as he looked at a magnified view of the planet. “It looks like a desert. Any evidence of water?”
Ethan’s fingers tapped away on his keyboard, bringing up some basic information they’d collected thus far. “Um, we can’t see it right now, but on the far side of the planet, there is definitely a large body of water. Down at the south pole, there’s another body of water, but it isn’t as large as the one on the far side.”
“How big is this body of water?” Reynolds asked skeptically. “I mean, the planet looks pretty arid.”
“I guess we’ll see in another hour when the planet rotates around,” Ethan said sarcastically.
Into the Battle Page 27