by D. J. Holmes
“I’m going to suspend all operations,” Johnston replied. “The Karacknids now outnumber us by a factor of ten to one. If not worse. Every raid we launch we are losing marines. Marines we cannot replace. You’ve seen the reports just as I have. We all thought the war would be over when that massive Karacknid fleet passed through the system. Yet barely half of them returned and most were damaged. We haven’t seen sight nor sign of them since. Our fleet must have won a battle. No doubt at great cost, but it means relief is coming. An invasion force will arrive to retake the planet. But if we are going to be around to help, we need to go to ground. We can start planning how best to hamper the Karacknids’ defenses when the eventual counter-attack comes. But if we keep fighting now, we won’t have the personnel or material to assist whatever forces come to retake the planet.”
Jeffers nodded. She understood what Johnston was saying. Yet there was another explanation to his analysis. The massive Karacknid fleet that had passed through the system could just as easily have destroyed Earth. The limited sensor readings the marines had been able to get of the fleet when it had first passed through Holstein had told them at least one thing. There had been no troop ships amongst the enemy ships. The fleet had not been on an invasion mission. And we know they nuked Jaranna, Jeffers reminded herself. It was just as likely that Home Fleet had been destroyed and Earth was in ruins. If that was the case, no help was coming. When she looked up to meet Johnston’s eyes she saw the doubts she felt reflected there. “Okay Major General, I understand. What part do you want me to play?” she asked in a tone that conveyed none of her emotions. If the Karacknids had won, there was nothing they could do about it. And if they acknowledged the possibility, what was left of the marines on Holstein would lose all hope. We need one last mission to focus on, Jeffers realized. Johnston was giving it to them.
“I’m giving you what’s left of 4th Battalion, 2nd Regiment,” Johnston replied. “They are currently in hiding twenty kilometers east of Landung City. Your special forces marines can rest up here for a few days. We’ll look after your injured. Then you can head out. You’re to make sure they are well dug in and supplied. Then you’re to hunker down with them until I send orders otherwise. We already have plenty of reconnaissance data on the Karacknid defenses. If and when we get indication that a counter invasion is coming, we’ll begin recon missions to update our intelligence. For now, you can focus on planning what attacks will be most effective to hamper their defenses. Taking out their ground-based anti-shuttle missiles will be our priority.”
“I understand,” Jeffers said as she nodded. “How many marines are left in fourth Battalion?”
“According to the last update, seventy,” Johnston answered. Jeffers tried and failed to keep her face straight. A typical marine battalion had six hundred marines. “You’ll have to scrounge together what heavy weapons you can,” Johnston continued. “I think they have a couple of hyper velocity missiles, but that’s it. You may have to prepare some makeshift IED’s and whatever else you can come up with.”
“At least it will give us something to do while we are staying out of sight,” Jeffers replied. “Where do you plan to hide the marines still fighting in the north?”
“I’ve had a couple of companies from third regiment preparing several locations. We’ll have to split the marines coming down from the north into more than a hundred smaller groups. We haven’t had time to check out all the hiding places the locals have shared with us, but we’ll have to make do. It will be better than staying in the mountains when the last dampeners are destroyed.”
Jeffers wasn’t going to argue with that. Still, it sounded like life was not going to be fun for those marines. They could get to some cave or other spot only to find it less than useless as a place to lie low. Marines could survive pretty much anywhere, but if they couldn’t keep out of sensor range of the orbital ships and Karacknid patrols, they would be wiped out. “I’m sure you will do what you can for them,” she said. Not for the first time, she was thankful she didn’t have Johnston’s responsibilities. It was bad enough carrying the guilt of all those who had died under her command. Johnston had overseen the deaths of thousands of marines over the last several months. And no matter what he does, hundreds more will be added to that number in the coming weeks. “If it’s okay Major General, I will take my leave. I want to make sure my injured are being taken care of.”
Johnston waved for her to stand. “By all means Major. We’ll talk more before you leave.”
Jeffers saluted again and quickly turned away from Johnston. As weary and downtrodden as she felt, Johnston looked worse. She needed to find a distraction from her despair or it would consume her and staying with Johnston wasn’t going to provide it.
Chapter 12
The Gift is a marvelous thing. Thought to be unique to our galaxy, it drove much of the second Interstellar Expansion Era. The first pre-FTL settlers who discovered it thought it was a gift given to them to allow them to escape Earth. They were right. Yet it was a far greater Gift given to the Empire. To date eight wormhole event horizons have been discovered and it is believed there may yet be more.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD.
Regin shipyard, Maximilian system. November 15th 2481 AD.
Emilie couldn’t help but beam as she steered the shuttle into a slow spiral around Intrepid. The exploration cruiser was beautiful. The weapons systems, sensor blisters and stealth coating all looked pristine. They should, she thought as her smile widened. They are all brand spanking new. Of course, what was under the surface was what really had her smiling. Intrepid had spent the last five weeks with her hull open to space as engineers from Regin removed her reactors and replaced them with the latest designs Commander Scott had come up with before she left the shipyard. Many other components throughout the cruiser had also been ripped out and replaced whilst still more had been upgraded. Intrepid had been designed and built to be a fast, long range warship specialized in operating on her own. Now, with her upgrades, Emilie reckoned she was the fastest and one of the stealthiest ships in the Human fleet. Not that there’s much competition, a voice in Emilie’s mind reminded her. She pushed that thought aside just as she was suppressing the small amount of guilt she still felt. Whilst everyone else was preparing to face the Karacknids and help drive them out of Human space, she was heading in the opposite direction. She was determined that such thoughts wouldn’t spoil her moment. Intrepid’s hull had been put back together several hours ago and she was carrying out a final inspection. If everything was to her satisfaction, they would be departing within the next couple of days.
With a gentle touch on the shuttle’s joystick, she brought the shuttle in for a closer look. She nodded in approval. There was no evidence that the engineers had cut a hole in the cruiser’s hull to access her reactors. They had done a proper job of sealing her back up. As she continued her circle around the ship, a familiar face caught her attention. A tall muscular woman was standing in one of the observation blisters. As the shuttle approached, she waved. Emilie smiled and returned the gesture. Pretty much everyone on board the cruiser was unknown to her. Everyone except Lieutenant Shaw. Both before she left Earth, and then on Britannia when she had first stepped aboard Intrepid to take command, Emilie had been able to pick the cream of the officers and Navy personnel available. She hadn’t known any of them though. It will be good to have one familiar face on this voyage, she thought as her shuttle drifted out of sight of the marine Lieutenant. Of course, there is another, Emilie’s cheeks reddened. She tried to force those thoughts down too, but she wasn’t so successful. Alongside the cruiser’s normal complement of officers and crew, her uncle had assigned an intelligence team. Given their mission and the fact that they were going into a completely unknown area of space, having several experts on alien culture and other intelligence related activities seemed like a very wise precaution. She didn’t know whether her uncle was aware of the delicate relationship she and Lieutenant Alverez shared. Whethe
r he was or not, he had picked the best man to lead the unit. Alverez had served as the Outer Defense Fleet’s intelligence officer for the entire time her uncle had commanded the fleet. There is no relationship, Emilie said herself. Delicate or not. As a Lieutenant, she had liked him. She suspected he had felt the same, but neither of them had acted on it and since the Outer Defense Fleet’s return from Jaranna, their paths had diverged. But now they have reconnected… Stop it, Emilie scolded herself as she refocused on Intrepid. She had a hundred and one things she had to devote her attention to. Alverez was not one of them.
“All right, that’s enough stargazing,” she said. As much as she would have loved to spend another hour taking in the beauty of her command, she had things to do. With another flick of the shuttle’s joystick, she turned it towards the cruiser’s shuttle bay. Ever so gently, she brought the shuttle in to land. After the hangar door closed and the bay was pressurized, she lowered the shuttle’s ramp and stepped back onto her cruiser’s deck. Unsurprisingly, First Lieutenant Owen Jones was already waiting for her.
“Well, how does she look?” he asked excitedly. “Maybe I should take a shuttle and have a peak myself. Two eyes are always better than one.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not competent to assess my own ship?” Emilie asked deadpan.
Jones’ enthusiasm died instantly. “No, of course not Captain. I was just, I thought I would like…”
Emilie broke into a smile. “Relax Lieutenant. I knew what you meant.” She winked at him. “I’m sure everyone would love to get a good look at her. She is beautiful.”
“Oh,” Jones said as relief washed over his face.
Emilie couldn’t help but laugh at him. “Don’t worry, I don’t bite Lieutenant. You can take out a shuttle another time perhaps. For now, I have other things for you to do. When you’re Captain you can take as many pleasure rides in your shuttle as you want. But you work for me at the minute.” She winked again. “Now, what did you want to see me about?”
“Right, yes” Jones replied with a start. Emilie knew he hadn’t quite got used to her familiarity yet. She had appreciated it in her uncle, and she intended to foster the same kinds of relationships; at least among her two senior Lieutenants. “I have the latest update on the final upgrades,” he said as he passed a datapad to Emilie.
“Great,” Emilie said as she reached for the datapad. “Come on, let’s go,” she added as she moved past Jones.
“Where are we going? Jones asked as he rushed to fall in step beside her. “There’s nothing on our schedule.”
“I’ve just finished my final external examination. Now we’re going to go through the whole ship. I want to see every nook and cranny. We’ll particularly take a look at these,” Emilie emphasized as she tapped the datapad. “I want to make sure everything is ship-shape before we request permission to depart.”
“Depart?” Jones repeated as his voice rose. “I thought we’d be a couple of weeks away from that at least.”
Emilie shook her head. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Anything that we can do en-route to the Gift we are going to do ourselves. I want to get this mission going.”
Jones fell into silence as he walked alongside his Captain. After a minute or so he spoke again. “What do you think we are going to find on the other side?”
“Who knows?” Emilie replied as she shrugged. “At this stage, your guess is as good as mine Lieutenant.” But whatever we find, it better help us defeat the Karacknids, she thought. She wasn’t heading in the opposite direction of the war for no reason. Whatever it took, she was determined to find something that would advance Humanity’s chances of survival. And we’re going to do it as quickly as we can.
*
Intrepid, the Gift. November 29th 2481 AD (two weeks later).
“Intrepid, this is Gift control, permission to proceed has been granted,” a voice said over the open COM channel to the small orbital station that was Gift control.
“Well, there is nothing else for it,” Emilie said as she stared into the maelstrom of gravimetric eddies that was the Gift. “Take us forward.”
Most of Intrepid’s crew had travelled through the wormhole that led to Haven a handful of times. Emilie had done it more than twenty. She still remembered her first. Her belly had been a bedlam of nerves. That had been different though, she hadn’t been the first person to ever traverse the wormhole. Thousands had done it before her. This time, she was going to be the first. Her nerves had ratcheted up to another level. Despite the feelings swirling around inside her, she kept her face impassive. She was well aware that a number of Intrepid’s bridge officers were stealing glances at her. They too were nervous. It was easy for her to picture her uncle’s face as he had led the Outer Defense Fleet into a number of deadly space battles. Every time he had portrayed the same stalwart expression. It had given everyone a quiet confidence. She doubted her presence had such an effect, but at the very least, she didn’t want to scare anyone by letting them see her nerves.
Intrepid edged forward. As she passed Gift control, the station dipped its shuttle landing lights to wish the cruiser luck. Picking up speed, the cruiser passed by several small defensive forts. There were six of them, though eight more were under construction. No one knew what kind of alien threats might lie on the other side of the newly found wormhole. The Emergency Committee wasn’t taking any risks. Then, as the gravimetric eddies swirled around Intrepid, the holographic display darkened. Within the Gift Intrepid’s normal sensors were all but incapable of detecting anything. Only two faint signals were coming through. One was the navigational buoy at the mouth of the wormhole passage that led to Haven. The second was a similar buoy. Intrepid locked onto it.
Whilst the normal sensors were all but blinded, the gravimetric sensors went crazy. No one yet understood exactly what the Gift was. No natural source for all the gravimetric disturbances had been detected. Nor had anyone been able to recognize any distinct pattern to the appearance and disappearance of all the eddies. Even the Kulreans had been surprised by the data that Earth had shared with them. They are beautiful though, Emilie said to herself as she watched them swirl around her ship. It wasn’t the first time she had had such thoughts, but she allowed herself to indulge them as she watched the random patterns. She needed a distraction.
Intrepid’s navigation officer eased the cruiser towards the buoy while everyone else watched in silence. “Ten kilometers from the event horizon,” she announced. “Six… Four… two…”.
As she always did, Emilie closed her eyes tightly as the nose of her cruiser touched the event horizon. In an instant, the entire ship was sucked into the wormhole. Just as she expected, her insides felt like someone had shoved a fork inside her and whisked everything up. The sensation felt like it lasted nearly ten seconds, though the scientists kept assuring everyone that the journey from one end of the wormhole to another was instantaneous. Then the sensation stopped and Emilie opened her eyes. The holographic display immediately updated itself with the new data Intrepid’s sensors were getting. As a result, an entirely different starscape greeted her. On the gravimetric display a handful of eddies were visible, but they were few and far between. As Intrepid moved away from the event horizon, they quickly dissipated. Whatever the Gift was, the gravimetric disturbance was far higher on the other end of the wormhole.
Emilie took a deep breath and allowed her shoulders to relax. They had made it. Glancing around, it looked like everyone and everything was in one piece. “Systems check,” she ordered.
“All stations are reporting green,” Jones replied moments later. “There’s nothing to indicate traversing that wormhole was any different from entering the Haven one.”
“Very good,” Emilie responded with a nod. “Launch survey drones. Helmsman, set course for the A shift passage. Let’s get to work.”
From Intrepid’s modified underbelly, five automated shift space drones broke free and set off on their preassigned survey flights. The end of the wormhole
Intrepid had just traversed came out in the middle of open space. Previous automated survey drones had detected several potential shift passages that might lead to star systems. Though none had been fully explored. One of them has to lead somewhere, Emilie thought as Intrepid jumped into shift space for the brief flight to the potential shift passage designated A. They can’t all be dead ends. If they were, she would be forced to return home in failure. The nearest star system was two light years away. Flying there in normal space was out of the question.
*
January 8th 2482 AD (six weeks later).
“We did it,” Maguire said in an excited voice. She spun around in her command chair and shot Emilie and Jones a wide grin. “We have discovered our first star system!”
Emilie felt a similar joy. “Pass the word to the entire crew. Let them know that the drone’s data was correct.” Technically drone four had discovered the end of the shift passage. But such a trifle meant nothing to Intrepid’s crew. It had taken longer than Emilie had hoped, probably far longer than many of Intrepid’s crew had thought. But when they returned to the rendezvous point to link up with the exploration drones for the fifth time, one had claimed to have successfully navigated a shift passage all the way to a star system. Now Intrepid was sitting on the very edge of that system.