Overrun: Project Hideaway

by Michael Rusch

  Parker turned his head at this and gave a soft laugh.

  "Well, I hope we can agree on this. We can’t even begin to think about landing this goddamn thing until we figure out a way to neutralize the RCCs."

  The forced calmness Barnes had worked hard to create shattered with these words. The edge of his lips started to twitch, and new patches of sweat beaded across his forehead.

  "Yeah," Barnes nodded while rubbing at the lump on the back of his neck from the radiation caplet sitting below his skin. "On that, I agree."

  “Well that’s a start,” Parker said leaning back into his seat.

  He scratched at his chin with the back of his hand and gazed absently out into space.

  He stared out there for many long minutes marveling at the utter blackness of the galaxy and listening to the nervous sound of Barnes’ body trying to breathe.

  He was about to order Barnes to go to the rear of the ship to initiate a complete systems check, just to give him something to do, when something outside the command cabin caught his eye. Something small that didn't look quite right against the black backdrop of space.

  Parker stared at it for a long while. Without the aid of the ship’s equipment, it was still too far out to see.

  "Jeff, you still got those extended range glasses strapped away somewhere?"

  "What?"

  "Don't you keep them up here?"

  "Yeah, they're right here," Barnes said reaching uneasily beneath his seat. "What do you need them for?"

  "Could I have them, please?" Parker's voice trailed off. His eyes didn't leave the Hideaway viewport.

  "What do you see?" Barnes asked staring hard at Parker and handing over the glasses.

  Without looking at Barnes or acknowledging his question, Parker took the glasses and lifted them to his eyes.

  He worked their controls until the object came into clearer view. A silver speck floated in the distance. It was still pretty far out. Even through the extended range glasses, there wasn’t much more detail.

  "I don't know. There’s something out there."

  "What do you mean something's out there?” Parker asked quickly back. “What, something like a meteor? Satellite? What?"

  "I think it's a ship."

  "A ship?” Barnes asked again nervously. “One of ours?"

  "One of ours would have contacted us before getting this close," Parker said lowering the glasses and looking at Barnes. “Get down to the observation area.”

  With these words, as if cracked by a lightning burst, the stale still air permeating the cockpit coursed with energy.

  Barnes sprang abruptly from his seat and grabbed a headset hanging near the cockpit door. He jogged down the corridor while he adjusted it across his head. His plastic shoes made a light tapping noise across the metal grates with every step.

  Parker stayed in his seat and pulled his own headset across his ear.

  "You read me?" Parker spoke calmly into the transmitter while pressing it closer to his face.

  "Yeah, signal’s clear," Barnes responded pulling his own transmitter to his jaw.

  Heavy breaths interrupted Barnes’ voice. His body was still adjusting to moving around again after fifty years of not being used.

  "When you get down there, use the long-range scope. But no power to anything. Do you got that? The only power going through that room should be for your lights."

  "Christ, Jed," Barnes started to say through another tortured wheeze.

  He turned a right corner, then a left. He came to a ladder at the end of the next corridor. Without breaking stride, he kicked both legs around its side and slid five floors deeper into the ship.

  "With the power down, we're not going to be able to see shit. If it is a ship, and we don’t power up to monitor communication transmissions, we won’t know anything until its right up on top of us."

  "We can't risk power to the scope," Parker replied firmly. "I'm not one hundred percent sure it’s even a ship."

  "Well, then why the fuck am I even down here?" Barnes stopped for a second to catch his breath.

  Parker could hear his heavy wheezing through the headset.

  "Because whatever it is," Parker spoke steadily. "It’s coming closer. I can see that."

  "It's coming closer? Shit, Jed. We have to light up the sensors," Barnes said starting to run again. "I'm not going to be seeing much more through a powerless scope than you're seeing up there right now."

  Back in the cockpit, what Parker had seen in the distance was becoming larger. It now looked like a silver dot. Its small shape was plainly visible against the extreme blackness of deep space and the dark shadow of the moon. As Parker watched, the dot continued to steadily grow.

  "Velocity is constant. Bearing three. Dash two. Dash three. It's definitely coming this way."

  Down in the bottommost portion of the ship, Barnes slapped his fist against the door controls to the observation area. With a swoosh, the door lifted quickly up. Before it was even flush with the ceiling, Barnes ducked under and ran towards the ship's long-range view scope.

  The observation area was a gigantic room. Its walls were composed of giant plates of turbo glass making them transparent to the great outside of space. The long and cylindrical long-range scope stood obtrusively at its center above the rest of the sensory equipment. Barnes had always thought it resembled a giant shotgun aimed away into the galaxy’s unknown.

  "Are you there, Jeff?" Parker’s voice spoke again into his ear.

  "I'm at the scope," Barnes said swinging the mammoth power scope towards the location bearing his captain had just rattled off.

  He pulled the cover off its eyepiece and squinted into the device. He lugged its bulky frame around forcefully with his shoulders until the silver dot came into view.

  From where Parker was watching it, it had grown another three times in size.

  "I can see it, but can’t quite make it out, Captain."

  "Alright. Keep the scope on that setting. Get to the gun."

  "The gun's going to take power." Barnes slid his shoulders from the scope. Pulled down by its own weight, its rear barrel sank to the floor.

  "No power," Parker said from back in the cockpit refocusing the extended range glasses back to his eyes. "Not yet."

  Barnes ducked back into the corridor. The door to the observation room swooshed shut behind him. Holding his arms out against the wall, he ran two doors further down the silent empty passages that lined the ship. He again punched the entrance controls with his fist. This time the door didn't open right away. He had to pound the control a second time before it allowed him to go in.

  "I'm in weapons, Captain," Barnes said entering the ship's west side ammunitions room. A single control panel stood alone in the center of the chamber. Parker stepped quickly up to it and hit a series of buttons. An entire section of wall dropped through the floor revealing more turbo glass and another grand eyeful of the nothingness outside the Hideaway.

  The assault cannon was mounted near the giant window. Through a section of wall beneath the glass, its long nose reached out of the room away from the Hideaway. Even without the long-range observation scope, the object outside could now be easily seen

  "It's coming up pretty quick, Jed. What do you want me to do?"

  In the weapons chamber, except for the observation window, the wall area was constructed more from metal than turbo glass. Barnes' voice reverberated throughout the room.

  "Ready the gun, but don't prime it to fire,” Parker answered him. “That's about as much of a power surge I want to risk.”

  "Copy that, Command Center," Barnes said while entering access codes into the system and firing up the rest of the electronics necessary to operate the assault cannon.

  "How long again does it take from charge sequence to fire?"

  "Could be ten minutes," Barnes said walking over to the side of the cannon, one of only a few components of defense weaponry spread out across the entire ship. "Could take longer. It’s been down for f
ifty years. It could actually take a helluva lot longer to prime it and fire it up."

  "Channel as much energy into the gun as you can. Bleed it in slowly. Put a meter on it if you have to. Keep it slow. Whomever’s ship it is, it’s still coming."

  "Now it’s a ship again."

  "It's coming too fast to be anything else,” Parker’s transmitted voice answered ominously through Barnes’ headset. "Get to the back and rig the nukes at the rear of the ship for jettison and detonation. Do everything manually. Keep as much equipment activity down as possible. Makes it harder for them to get a reading on us."

  "If it's still coming this way, chances are they know we're here, no matter what we do,” Barnes responded. “I say we fire up the ship, Captain, and take our chances. That way everything will be ready. The gun and nukes will all be primed in plenty of time for an armed attack."

  "Can you see the Defenders from where you’re at?" Parker asked.

  Barnes stepped closer to the view window. Holding the tip of his transmitter to his lip, he pressed his head against its surface. Beneath the main portion of the Hideaway structure he could see the two small Defender-class fighter crafts attached by metallic cylindrical tentacles to its surface.

  "They’re there. I can see them."

  "Can you see any structural or surface damage from meteors or space debris?"

  "From here they look pretty good, Parker." Barnes said taking his head from the window and moving back to the larger observation area.

  Further out in space, the speck was now the size of his hand and quickly growing in size.

  “Whoever it is, it sure looks like they're coming this way now."

  "Let as much of the pre-generated energy as you can seep into the Defenders," Parker still barked orders into Barnes’ ear. "Better make sure they’re good and warm too."

  "So what happens, Jed, if we don’t figure out who the hell they are until it’s way too late? We figure out to late that it’s not one of ours."

  "As soon as we start bouncing sensors off them, they're going to know we're here. And then they're going to be on us. Just give me a bit to identify the ship. Go get the defense ships ready…and the nukes…just in case."

  "Copy that Command Center," Barnes said walking from the weapons room on the far left side of the Hideaway. "You never answered my question, though Captain. What do we do, if we find out it’s a hostile ship?"

  "I'm hoping we can establish identification before it’s too close. If its intentions are hostile, we can go after it with the fighters."

  "And if you can't establish identification in time? It's been fifty years, Jed. What if you can't do it. We need to make a decision now."

  Barnes walked angrily down the corridor with a steady and determined gait.

  "I think we should go after them first. Make them try to contact us and talk us down."

  "As of now, we wait. They haven't increased speed. Ready the rest of the ship."

  "Jed, we have to think in terms of guarding this cargo. We need to light it up. Light it up now. That way we can get everything ready at once. Make sure everything works. And not get taken by surprise."

  "Barnes for now, we wait."

  "That sucks, Command Center," Barnes muttered under his breath and pulled his transmitter away from his mouth.

  Back in the cockpit, Parker lifted the extended range glasses back to his eyes. He stared across the nose of the Hideaway at the coming object.

  With every passing second, it loomed larger. Its course was even and steady. Parker stared through the extended range glasses and watched it slowly approach.

  Chapter 17

  "Still nothing, RadCom? No sign of life on the Hideaway?"

  "Nothing, sir," the radio communications officer reported back to the captain of the search frigate. "No indications of sensor use or extraneous power. As far as I can tell, the ship is still down."

  "Good. Navigation Officer," the captain spoke back over his shoulder. "Maintain your present heading. I want you to slide in nice and easy beside them."

  "There is one thing, however, sir."

  "What is it?" the captain looked down at RadCom scowling at his monitors and controls.

  "It’s not much, but low-level bounce readings are showing something behind us. Some other entity in the area. I’m not quite sure what it is. "

  "Something on an intercept course?"

  "Not that I can tell. It’s not moving very fast, sir, and it’s so far back it’s almost hard to say."

  "Can you determine a source trajectory from Earth?"

  "Not really, Captain. I can't trace its source to anything. It shows up off and on. I'm having problems even confirming its actual existence."

  The captain let his breath out slowly between his teeth. "Keep an eye on it, RadCom. It’s probably just a sensor echo bouncing off the Hideaway. Sometimes they throw shadows. We'll blast it with a full sensor scan once we get close to the ship and are fairly certain it isn't going to run away. Even if the pilots are awake. We'll get a good look then at what's going on."

  The captain moved back to his station.

  "But I want everyone to keep top interest priority on all visual and soft-bounce scans in that area,” the captain spoke louder to all the personnel manning the command center of the ship. “Monitor everything around us as best you can. I especially want utmost attention on the Hideaway. Keep an eye out for any sudden surge in life or energy readings. Our presence is still a secret. I want it kept that way so that we can just get this job done and head back to Earth.”

  “Or perhaps just to another world willing to take us,” the captain finished softly under his breath.

  RadCom was the only one that heard him, but he didn’t raise his head from his controls. He knew what the captain meant and felt it too in his heart.

  He would have preferred just changing course and heading to another world. And if there wasn’t one to take them, just setting the ship on course to deep space until everything ran out. And they all just died alone and unnoticed deep in the galaxy away from what had become of the Earth.

  Behind him, the captain sat back down at his station leaving RadCom to his own thoughts. The rest of the men in the command center busied themselves again at their command stations and returned to their assigned work.

  Chapter 18

  "That's two! We got two! We got a second ship on scope!" Parker's strained voice filled Jeff Barnes' left ear. Barnes stopped running down the corridor and pulled his transmitter closer to his face.

  "What do ya got, Jed?"

  He stopped in front of a small view porthole on the starboard side of the Hideaway. Lights from the outside hull of the first approaching ship began to cast an eerie glow through the Hideaway’s dark corridors. It was less than a mile away.

  The large ship was almost upon them and was making final maneuvers to bring itself in line with the Hideaway’s docking bay. It was where Barnes was heading next to ready weapons and prepare to defend the ship against possible unauthorized boarders.

  "No markings on the first ship. Repeat. No markings. None that I can make out. Still unable to determine if it’s from Earth."

  Barnes ran to a small room just down from the landing bay entrance tunnel. He banged his fist against the locking sensor and ran inside. Once within, he hurriedly threw open the large steel doors that lined the walls on two of its sides. One after the other, they banged loudly open against the metal wall behind them revealing the Hideaway's weapons arsenal.

  "I'm breaking out the weapons," Barnes said breathing hard. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead.

  "There is some hull damage," Parker reported again from the command center. "Burns of some sort. It’s already been in a fight. They're not displaying any identification codes that I can pick up."

  "Would you expect them to?" Barnes asked while running to the glass containers behind him that held the assault rifles. Skipping the locks and using the butt of a hand weapon, he obliterated the doors of each protective
case.

  The shattered glass spilled across Barnes’ feet and slid across the floor. The noise momentarily drowned out Parker’s voice in his ear.

  "I would expect something," Barnes could hear Parker say grimly after the clatter of crashing glass had finally subsided. "If they were just here to bring us back online, they would be trying to contact us."

  "I don't know how much more you need, Jed," Barnes said while loading ammunition by the fistful into a large carrying bag.

  Inside a second bag, he threw an assortment of hand assault weapons. He strapped the ones that were too long for the bag across his back.

  Suddenly the ship jolted sharply to the side knocking Barnes down hard to the ground into the piles of broken glass strewn about the chamber. Groans of tortured steel came from the walls around him. Its echoes sounded throughout the surrounding corridors.

  "They're scraping us!" Parker's static-laden voice blared loudly in his ear. "They came right up against us! No approach procedure! They're bombing us with sensor scan!"

  Barnes ran again to the outside porthole and pressed his face against the turbo glass.

  "They're putting out their boarding tube! Panels are retracting all over the place!" Barnes said pulling an assault rifle from his back and throwing his ammunition bag loudly to the floor. "They're coming in, Jed. They're coming in right now!"

  Barnes clicked his weapon barrel open and jabbed the unit’s large explosive ammunition cartridges roughly inside. His hands shook as he did.

  When his first weapon was fully armed, he threw it roughly aside and grabbed the second of four he had strapped across his back. A handful of cartridge rounds flew from his sweaty grasp and clattered loudly across the metal floor.

  Barnes didn't bother to pick them up. He just reached in his bag for more.

  "Jed, you better get down here. We don't have much more time."