Cabrina’s gaze flicked from feed to feed, and her head moved back and forth. “Where’s the other one? Anyone have eyes on him? I’m not spotting anything on sensors.”
Heavy gunfire sounded from ahead of them, in the direction of Alpha Five, Alpha Six, and the infantry survivors.
Cabrina twirled her exo and charged. “Alpha Two with me. Alpha Four, guard Three.”
She adjusted her optical magnification, her heart thundering. The damned Torch Dragon had gone after the withdrawing exos and infantry, who had ducked behind the remains of a fountain to guard their wounded. Mindlessly firing straight ahead would risk hitting her own people. It might have planned that.
The Torch Dragon walked its cannon fire across the fountain, almost taking the head off one of the infantry. It was obvious it was trying to kill the wounded soldiers. It jumped from side to side to avoid return fire. This one was faster and more agile than the two they’d just destroyed, and it barely showed up on Cabrina’s sensor displays.
She sprinted closer to the edge of the street, hoping to get a decent angle on the Elite. At that moment, she understood their true purpose, their real role in this insurrection. They had the same purpose as any monster of legend: to inspire terror. It was time to channel her inner Saint George and slay a dragon.
But Cabrina was too far away and not fast enough. The garrison had lost enough people in the rebellion, and she was tired of good soldiers dying.
I just need a distraction, she thought. A couple of seconds.
Someone popped up from behind a wrecked flitter with a missile launcher on his shoulder. No, not someone, a helmeted man in a rebel uniform. He screamed something and fired. The missile didn’t zoom toward the soldiers at the fountain or Cabrina and her advancing squadmate. It headed straight toward the Torch Dragon Elite, striking its center and blowing it into flaming chunks in an impressive blast.
Cabrina slowed, confused about what had happened. The rebel soldier tossed down his launcher and ran into a nearby building.
“LT, orders?” Alpha Two asked, wonder in his voice. “Do we go after him?”
“No,” Cabrina replied.
“But he’s a rebel.”
“I don’t know what he is, but anyone who’s against those things is on our side. Let’s get everyone back to the field hospital before a bunch of Leem brains in doomsday ships arrive.”
Chapter Thirty-One
October 10, 2230, Solar System, Asteroid Belt, UTC Space Fleet Base Penglai
A holographic image of New Samarkand floated above the conference room table. It looked dark and uninviting from space, as most planets without large oceans did to Erik. Maybe that was the universe trying to tell humanity where they should settle, but humans were a stubborn species. They’d set up a dome in Hell if they thought they could get away with it.
Erik settled in at the front of the table next to Jia. The engineers, Malcolm, Raphael, and Emma were spread out around the rest of the table. Anne and Kant were notable for their absence. The problem with getting more people was growing dependent on it, but Alina had already admitted her error, and Erik trusted she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
He inclined his head toward Raphael. “Let’s hear it. I’m assuming you wouldn’t have had us fly all the way out here if it was hopeless and we needed to take the long way around.”
Everyone turned to the scientist with an expectant look. They all knew the mission, and only Erik, Jia, and potentially Emma would be leaving the Argo once they arrived at New Samarkand. The real question wasn’t what they would do on the ground, but whether they could get there.
Erik had gotten so used to technological marvels in his quest against the Core that he sometimes forgot how special Emma and the jump drive were. The Lady was cashing in his lifetime of bad luck to give him what he needed to make up for screwing him on Molino. The DD might view him as a guinea pig testing their precious drive, but to him, the jumpship was the Chariot of Bloody Vengeance.
Things might have been different if he’d had it from the beginning. He might have had a small hope of catching up with the mercenaries who had pulled the trigger on Molino. That didn’t matter now. Jump drives might be impressive, but no one had a time machine. The Hunters and Navigators were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years ahead of the younger races, and they hadn’t had anything like that.
“Yes, on with the show,” Raphael declared.
He rubbed his hands together gleefully before making three precise gestures. New Samarkand disappeared, replaced by a complicated diagram depicting overlapping hyperbolas, dots, and a swarm of numbers. Erik squinted to try to parse the information but failed miserably. Too much math and out-of-context data. Judging by Jia’s expression, she didn’t understand it either, so he didn’t feel too bad. He didn’t bother to ask for clarification, assuming Raphael would explain. The man might be a gushing fanboy, but he generally got his point across in language Erik could understand.
“We need to get to New Samarkand, and it is twenty light-years away,” Raphael began, a huge smile on his face. “That means we need to travel almost five times as far as we did before. This is unprecedented in human history, let alone our time together.”
Jia folded her arms. “And we need to do it as quickly as possible. We’re already a month behind on all this. Every day we delay might mean the Core sinks their tentacles deeper into the rebellion.”
“How long would it take without the jump drive?” Malcolm asked. “Just curious before we go challenging all of human history.”
“About three and a half months,” Raphael answered. “You can see the problem.”
“Oh. That’s a long time.” Malcolm puffed up his cheeks and let out a breath. “A very long time to be on this small ship.”
“Too long,” Jia added. “Even if the military takes care of the rebellion, the Core will be long gone, and their tracks will be cold. It’d be pointless.”
“We can’t let them slither away this time.” Erik frowned. “They’ve already gutted the local ghosts, which means we might be the only ones who have the flexibility to do something about them. I don’t want this ending with a half-destroyed colony and those Core bastards skipping off to the next to repeat the same thing. Every time we stop them, we prove something to them. We prove their plans don’t always work, and that’s got to frustrate them and slow them down. It’s got to make them question everything. We need to get there ASAP and let them know even a month’s head start isn’t enough for them to get away with their crap.”
Jia, Wei, and Malcolm nodded eagerly. Janessa looked uncertain, and Lanara didn’t look like she was paying attention. Instead, she focused on the diagram above the table, mumbling numbers quietly.
“Hell, yeah!” Raphael saluted. “Of course, Erik! I want to help you kick the Core’s butt as much as you want to, and fortunately for you, I’ve been spending all my time since the last big mission working on this very problem and doing some tinkering.”
Erik’s brows lifted. “Tinkering? Is that what you call messing around with the jump drive?”
“Sure.” Raphael inclined his head toward the display. “Tinkering’s when I do my own thing. Science is when I work with a bunch of other people, and we proceed in a slow and boring way. Even without Emma, I bet we could have been a lot farther with the drive if the DD wasn’t so safety-obsessed.”
“Safety’s not a bad thing,” Malcolm complained meekly.
“He’s been coordinating with me as well,” Emma added with an annoyed look. “The navigational process improvements are sufficient for longer-range jumps within the limits he’s presumably about to explain, which leaves us with the hardware considerations. Those are beyond my abilities to optimize.”
Malcolm swallowed. “Not to be that guy, but going back to the whole safety thing? Life’s important, including our lives. If we push the drive too much, what happens?”
Raphael’s breath caught, and his lips parted in excitement. “Great question
! I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it. There are many possibilities. Not an infinite number, mind you, because this is something the research group spent a lot of time on before we started construction of the drive, but I’ve continued to explore it.”
“Why did you spend so much time worrying about it before?” Jia asked.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t accidentally create a black hole or blow up the sun. You know, normal risk assessment stuff. It’s also how I knew that nesting the gates wouldn’t blow up the entire Solar System.” Raphael looked off to the side. “Mostly.”
“Mostly? I’m sorry I asked. Let’s focus on things that don’t end with the destruction of stars or planets.” Jia rubbed her temples. “Presumably.”
“Of course.” Raphael ticked up his fingers as he rattled off his explanation in a cheery tone. “One, if we push too hard, the whole thing explodes in a disappointing way and kills us all, but a normal explosion, not like a super-weapon explosion. That being said, the second possibility is the whole thing produces a nested portal situation. Boom. Big, grand superweapon-scale explosion.” He mimicked the explosion with his hands. “Hunter-killing explosion.”
“Do we die?” Malcolm asked. “Or can we like ride the shockwave or something like I saw that guy do in Hyperspace Cowboy?”
“That’s silly. It’s just a movie. Of course we’ll die.” Raphael laughed. “But we’ll die in a much more spectacular manner than the first possibility.” He sighed. “It’ll be so quick we won’t have time to appreciate how beautiful it is.”
“That’s good to know.” Malcolm slumped in his chair. “I’d hate to die in a boring way. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and some astronomer will record it.”
Jia looked at Malcolm and Raphael. “We might as well figure this out while we’re on the subject because we can never be sure how much we’ll have to push things. What else might happen?”
Raphael splayed his fingers and then pushed his other fingers through the spaces. “We could, theoretically, end up fused inside some other stellar object. That’s unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which space is mostly empty, but there’s a non-zero probability. Another possibility, according to the math but not necessarily justified by the physics, is that we overshoot in a big way. Jump ten, a hundred, a thousand times our intended distance.”
Janessa cleared her throat, looking down when everyone turned her way. “T-that’s not that crazy.”
Raphael smiled, not a single hint of displeasure or condescension in his face when he next spoke. “Why do you say that?”
“It happened to the Leems during the Roswell Incident, right? They’ve admitted there was no way they could jump as far today, and they’ve had hundreds of years to work on their drive.”
Raphael slapped a palm to his forehead. “She does have a point. It’s obvious when you think about it. Historical precedent!”
Janessa managed a slight smile but didn’t look up.
Erik shook his head. “I don’t care about all these possibilities.”
“But they’re interesting,” Raphael complained.
“They aren’t tactically relevant. What’s the most likely bottom-line?”
If they hadn’t already been behind, Erik might have let the man indulge himself, but this wasn’t a scientific or engineering test, even though Raphael might treat it that way. This was about getting them to a mission site, no more, no less.
“Oh.” Raphael’s face fell. “Boring basic explosion is the most likely scenario. Even in that scenario, it’ll be powerful enough to destroy the entire ship and any other ships that are directly attached, but nothing else.”
Malcolm grimaced. “So much for the lifeboat idea I was going to suggest.”
Raphael shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to push the drive anywhere near that hard until we need to.”
“As long as we won’t take anyone else with us by accident.” Erik nodded slowly, possibilities swirling in his mind. “It’s good to have options and understand our limits. For all we know, next week, Alina will want us to jump to Molino, or the Prime Minister will send us into Zitark space to find Hunter artifacts.”
Malcolm grimaced. “Uh, I vote no on the space raptors.”
“I’m just throwing out possibilities,” Erik replied, no longer finding the idea outlandish after their Hunter encounter. “The jump drive is the one major advantage we have over the Core. We need to get the most out of it, and that means knowing its full capabilities and limitations, just like when we used it against the Hunter ship. That could save our lives, and if not this mission, then the next.”
Lanara swiped her hand through the air and brought up a data window filled with fluctuating graphs. She narrowed her eyes and finally broke her silence. “We need to know the current baseline potential before we can worry about anything else. I’ve heard a lot of theory, and I see these numbers, but I’m looking for something more concrete.”
“Of course,” Raphael assured her with a cheery smile. “It’s taken a lot of adjustments to get the field calibration right, especially with the inherent tendency to decay, let alone worrying about Xing Field interference—”
“Please, Raphael,” Erik interrupted. “Keep it to a level the rest of us can understand. I know you can.”
Raphael spread his hands in a grand gesture. “Two light-years per jump is easily achievable without any safety concerns or explosions. I’m confident enough to bet my life on it.”
“Good, because you’re also betting ours.”
Wei whistled and clapped. “Two light-years in the blink of an eye. Wow. And he’s saying it like it’s nothing.”
Jia frowned. “But it’s not the blink of an eye to prepare.” She gestured at Emma. “They still need to perform the navigation calculations and charge the drive, just like when we went to Alpha Centauri.”
“That’s true,” Raphael admitted. “It also requires more recharge time than between those jumps. By my estimates, and taking both those limitations into account, it’d be a max of about six jumps per day.”
Erik rubbed his chin. “Twelve light-years in twenty-four hours. Not bad. Not bad at all. We can get to any core world with that in one day, and out to the far frontier in five days. A day and a half for New Samarkand is damned fast.”
Malcolm raised his hand. “Jump drives are so far outside my field they might as well be in Zitark space, but don’t shorter jumps take less navigation plotting time?”
Emma nodded, an amused look growing. “You’re correct, Mr. Constantine.”
“Why not just make a lot of short jumps then? Shave off some time that way.” Malcolm shrugged.
Raphael shook his head. “Because the increased recharge and adjustment time on the drive would quickly add up to be longer than the time saved on the navigational plotting. The two-light-year limit is the best compromise to get the farthest distance in the least amount of time.”
“But you think you can extend that range in the future?” Jia asked. “Or do something about the recharge and adjustment time?”
Raphael nodded. “Yes. I’ve been working with Emma to improve navigation. The drive’s a prototype, remember? A work in progress, but the more we use it, the more we can improve it. It’s never going to jump us across the UTC in one go, but I’m confident I can squeeze better performance out of it. I can get you and Erik anywhere you need to go to take down bad guys.”
Jia gave him a soft smile. “You’re doing great. We wouldn’t be able to get to New Samarkand if it wasn’t for you.”
The scientist’s goofy smile grew so large it looked like he was trying to swallow himself. He waved his hands dismissively.
“Okay, a day and a half to two days.” Erik nodded at the diagram above the table. “Because of science and shit, so fine. That’s good, but we’ll be running well ahead of any messages from Earth to the colony and decent active intelligence. We can’t ignore the different possibilities upon arrival.”
“The rebellion
might already be over,” Malcolm suggested, sounding relieved.
He didn’t understand that even if that were true, they would still make planetfall. Erik didn’t feel the need to point it out.
“If it’s over, the Core will have already fled,” Jia replied. “I doubt we’ll get much intel from scraps of destroyed Elites.”
“We’d still have to look,” Erik insisted. “The Core is careful, but they’re not perfect, and they’ve been getting more desperate lately. But even before that, if they were perfect, we’d still be trying to figure out who the hell the Ascended Brotherhood is instead of helping to end them.”
Emma’s form shimmered, and her clothes changed to a ragged, torn, blood-stained khaki uniform. “Be wary of presumptions. It could be over, and the rebellion might have been victorious. In such a scenario, despite the increased danger to you, there would be a higher probability of the Core remaining on the world. Your disguises might be insufficient.”
Erik shook his head. “Even if they did their best and pushed out the colonial government, the Fleet would interdict the system. There are probably pirates or smugglers flying around, but there’s no way the rebels have taken out the Fleet. I’m sure the local garrison pulled in at least a few ships from other systems to help.”
Wei shook a finger. “What if the Hunters show up? They could have blown the Fleet ships away, and we wouldn’t know.”
Janessa shivered and rubbed her shoulders. “Don’t even joke about that. When she briefed us about that mission, Alina told us that was a special situation, and something like that wouldn’t happen again.”
“Just saying that we’re talking about possibilities. It’s not impossible.” Wei shrugged. “The Core almost had one Hunter ship. Why not another? There might be one in every system, and they’ve been collecting them.”
Erik preferred fun-loving Wei to pessimistic Wei, but his pessimism wasn’t inherently wrong.
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